Untitled #77, 1980

About the Work

The woman in front of the window and the one with brown curls by the park bench are one and the same – or rather, they are represented by the same person. Cindy Sherman poses in front of her own camera, not as herself but in the adopted role of another person. The staged photographs play with female stereotypes familiar from cinema, advertising, and magazines, or even the everyday. Sherman questions female identity and related clichés, and also scrutinises the role of the creative artist-as-subject, a notion which had plunged into crisis in the 1960s.