Review: Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective

Sherman, Cindy. Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997. Print.

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Looking through a retrospective of Cindy Sherman’s work is a strange journey through the photographic history of American identity and perception.  Cindy Sherman:  A Retrospective (1997) begins with Sherman’s series of Untitled Film Stills, images she produced throughout the late 1970s.  In this series, Sherman dresses up in different outfits, makeup and wigs, and photographs herself in a variety of locales and situations.  Nearly all the photographs depict only Sherman, but seem to imply a human presence just outside the frame of the photograph.  In this unseen, but palpable, presence, there is an implied narrative action to the images.  In each image, Sherman performs the role of a film heroine, and we, as spectators, are invited to fill in the film’s narrative around the image. 

Untitled Film Still #3
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As many scholars have noted, her performances recall a cinematic history of black and white early Hollywood, film noir and B horror movies.  If a film still serves as an advertisement for the full length film, what does Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills advertise?  As art critic Arthur Danto points out, “the still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told” (4).  In Untitled Film Still #3 and #50 seen here, Sherman’s gaze toward a presence out of frame suggests such a story, but leaves the viewer to construct that narrative.  Sherman plays with the viewer’s relationship to the represented female identity in each image. We are implicated by how we construct narratives around represented images of the female subject. 

Untitled Film Still #50
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In the 1980’s, Sherman continues her performance work, but along with her turn to color photography, Sherman’s images become increasingly grotesque and disquieting. 

While her Untitled Film Stills play on the Hollywood ideal of the blond film actress, her work in the 1980s turns to fairy tales and horror stories. She begins using props and masks to further distort her image. 

Untitled #153
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As we confront the succession of Sherman’s image as “bag lady,” “hag,” and “pig,” she seems to become increasingly unrecognizable. Which turns the question, was Sherman recognizable to begin with?  The Untitled Film Stills invite us to take the image as a performed reality, we seem to buy that Sherman somehow is like the performance she plays, yet as her performance turns to the grotesque, Sherman’s images challenge the spectator’s recognition of the female image. Are the hags and bag ladies of Sherman’s later work less feminine, less human? 

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s retrospective of Cindy Sherman’s photography ends with her mid-90s work where she begins to employ “Dada/Surrealist” techniques of photomontage and double exposure. Using mannequins and plastic dolls, Sherman constructs monstrous human-like figures which further confront the spectator’s ability to recognize the human image.  What is human? How do we tell?  Sherman’s work challenges our ability to read representations of humanity.

Untitled #305
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But in her confrontation, she continues to invite our gaze, propelling us to consider the stories behind these represented subjects. It is our continuing interest in the stories behind the image (behind each woman and man) that contains the radical promise of recognizing one another’s humanity.