Published to accompany exhibition held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2/11/97 - 1/2/98; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 28/2/98 - 31/5/98.

How does someone become a ground-breaking artist? Does it start when you're very little and discover that you like to play dress up? Does it happen when you're ten years old and someone gives you a Polaroid camera for Christmas? Maybe it begins in college, when you're finally on your own to discover the world as you see it for the first time. Looking at the life of legendary photographer Cindy Sherman, Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan have created an unconventional biography, that much like Cindy Sherman's famous photographs, has something a little more meaningful under the surface. Infusing the narrative with Sherman's photographs, as well as children's first impressions of the photographs, this is a biography that goes beyond birth, middle age, and later life. It's a look at how we look at art.

"An in-depth look at the disturbing and abject sides of the American photo artist's oeuvre. Throughout her career, Cindy Sherman (*1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey) has been interested in the derailed and deviant sides of human nature, noticeable both in her selection of subject matter (fairytales, disasters, sex, horror, and surrealism) and in her disquieting interpretations of well-established photographic genres, such as film stills, fashion photography, and society portraiture. This richly illustrated publication seeks to highlight and acknowledge these aspects of her work based on selected examples and accompanied by texts by well-known authors, filmmakers, and artists who likewise deal with the grotesque, the uncanny, and the extraordinary in their artistic practice."--Publisher's website.

"For more than thirty years now, Cindy Sherman has been visualizing a whole gamut of role models and female identities. ... Contrary to popular belief, the famous Untitled Film Stills (1978-80) are not her earliest works, but rather those photographs she took as a student in Buffalo between 1975 and 1977. During those years, Sherman made playing with disguises her artistic concept, producing numerous previously unknown photographs that unite a striking number of theatrical elements. Using a variety of wigs, make-up, mimicry, gestures, expressions, and costumes, Sherman reveals different social identities by playing different roles. Gabriele Schor, director of the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, has performed a scholarly assessment of the conceptual beginnings of her oeuvre and is now publishing a catalogue raisonné of her early work."--Publisher description.

This book, which accompanies a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, considers Cindy Sherman's oeuvre through the lens of portraiture. Featuring key examples of her work - from her earliest photographs through to her most recent - it explores the mercurial relationship between appearance and realityCindy Sherman is among the most influential artists of her generation. Using herself as model, wearing a range of costumes and portraying herself in invented situations, she interrogates the imagery employed by the mass media, po pular culture and fine art. Television, advertising, magazines, fashion and Old Master paintings all form part of her visual language.Whether using make-up, costumes, props and prosthetics to manipulate her own appearance, or devising elaborate tableaux, her entire body of 40 years' work constitutes a highly distinctive response to contemporary and earlier culture, whose stylistic tropes she appropriates and quotes. This book will explore the rich cultural sources that Sherman plunders in creating provocative and ambiguous images that lead us to question the things we see.Sherman's work is surveyed through two related themes. Examining Sherman's art within the context of portraiture it explores the way that identity is constructed from appearance. It also considers the nature of Sherman's involvement with a range of styles by positioning her work in the context of the pre-existing imagery that she appropriates.