Object number1994.35.4
Untitled
Portfolio/Seriesfrom the October Portfolio One
Date1978
Artist
Cindy Sherman
(American, born 1954)
CultureAmerican
MediumGelatin silver print, printed 1993
EditionEdition 21of 30
DimensionsImage: 7 1/2 x 9 13/16 in. (19 x 25 cm)
Sheet: 14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in. (37 x 47 cm)
Sheet: 14 9/16 x 18 1/2 in. (37 x 47 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Fund
On View
Not on viewPeriod20th c
Classification(s)
SignedOn verso, signed center in pencil: Cindy Sherman
InscribedOn verso, by artist, center in pencil: 21/30 1978/1993
BibliographyLombino, Mary-Kay. Shape of Light: Defining Photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College, 2019, p. 95 Vassar Exhibitions
Exhibition HistoryShape of Light: Defining Photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, September 20 - December 15, 2019 Label TextOver the last fifty years, artists have established a strong tradition of critiquing our inherent and often unearned trust in photographs as windows onto reality. Associated with the so-called Pictures Generation, Cindy Sherman created iconic photographs in the 1970s in which she staged scenes for the camera and inhabited unexplained, fictional personas in her photographs. Her work highlights how every photograph is constructed, to some extent, by taking this to an extreme. Martine Gutierrez extends this tradition in her series Girl Friends, also acting as her own model, alongside a mannequin, and performing queer romance for the camera in black-and-white images that mimic the aesthetic of a black-and-white film still. Both Sherman and Gutierrez use mannequins, makeup, costumes, props, and the tricks of photography to create ambiguous images that complicate what it means to make a portrait. For Gutierrez, the blurriness of real vs fake, self vs other, performance vs authenticity is a means of exploring the complexity of her own identity as an Indigenous and trans woman.
DescriptionBlack and white image of Cindy Sherman, with short cropped dark hair wearing a suit with disheveled tie reading a newspaper. She lays in a bed and to her left sits a nightstand with an open drawer. There is a small table next to the stand with a ashtray filled with cigarettes and a splayed necklace.
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