Cindy Sherman - Retrospective

Cindy Sherman has taken self-portraiture and masquerade to the highest heights and the campiest lows, bringing the shady ambience of B-movies to art photography while exploring the plexus of narcissism, from its silliest manifestations to its most provocative expressions. Sherman explores the implications of role-playing and fantasy, seeing and being seen, and society's perceptions of women, eroticism, and consumerism in her photographs, creating resonant images and supplying art critics with much grist for their mills. In her contribution to this retrospective volume, Amelia Jones begins with the remark that "much ink has been spilled over Cindy Sherman," and, obviously, the flow continues, but Jones, Cruz, and their colleagues provide just the sort of commentary Sherman's work demands, and the photographs themselves are engaging, both viscerally and intellectually. Sherman has been in costume before her own camera for more than 20 years, earning the right to a major traveling exhibition and speculation as to what she'll come up with next. How many selves can a self be? Stay tuned.