Cindy Sherman

Born on January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, USA, Cindy Sherman is a popular name among the art lovers. This American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual self-portraits, was in 1995 chosen as the recipient for the famous MacArthur Award.

Shortly after Cindy’s birth, her family moved to the township of Huntington, Long Island, which marks the place that saw Cindy develop her interests in visual arts at college. Though her first passion was painting, her frustration over the mediums limitation soon steered her interests towards photography. Sherman usually works in series, photographing herself in a range of costumes. Her landmark 69 photograph series, the ‘Complete Untitled Film Stills’, containing all black and white photos, shows her as B-movie, foreign film and film noir style actresses. In her work, Sherman is both, revealed and hidden, named and nameless.

Some of Cindy’s other works include other visual forms like, the centerfold, fashion photograph, historical portrait and self-core sex image. Apart from working as a famed photographer, Sherman has also worked as an ace film director, her first film being ‘Officer Killer’ in 1997. She has even played a cameo role in John Water’s film, Pecker.

Cindy Sherman’s successful work in all the fields has bagged her numerous awards. In 1995, Sherman became the recipient of the prestigious ‘McArthur Fellowships’, popularly known as the ‘Genius Awards’. The fellowship is known to grant $500,000 over five years, with no strings attached to important scholars in a wide range of fields, to encourage their creative work in the future.

Along with all of her other famous achievements, Cindy Sherman has to her credit of having created Hallwalls, an arts center, with the help of Robert Longo, whom she had met during her college days and Charles Clough.