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.

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.

"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.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, a series of 69 black-and-white photographs created between 1977 and 1980, is widely seen as one of the most original and influential achievements in recent art.