Cindy Sherman

American, b. 1954

BiographyCindy Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in 1954, and grew up in suburban Huntington Beach on Long Island, the youngest of five children. She came to New York in 1977 shortly after receiving her B.A. in photography at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1976), a thriving art program at that time. She exhibited photographs of herself in 1977, and began the Untitled Film Stills in the same year. She continued to work in series and in 1980 began to work in color as well (as in Untitled #87 [Blue Shirt/Red Blanket], 1981, AMAM inv. 82.73). After several more groups of photographs of single women, she moved to images of herself dressed as historical costumed figures, and then to several series based on violent images of otherness, death, and brutality. She no longer always uses herself as a model, but photographs mannequin body parts in several grotesque series related to violent sexuality. Most recently, Sherman has photographed rotting fruit with visceral connotations.

Sherman became well known after her first one-person exhibition of Film Stills in 1981 at Metro Pictures in Soho, New York City. That same year she was featured in the Young Americans exhibition at the AMAM. In 1982, she had her first European exhibition in Amsterdam at the Stedelijk Museum. A sign of her early success came in the form of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1983. She remains an important figure on the New York and international art scene, with works in major collections around the globe, and continues to create imaginative, often bizarre works.