Yesterday, Lin and I went to the members' preview of the Cindy Sherman show, just opening at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, here until October 8.
If you can, go see it. The show spans her work from the 1970's, when she was a student, to the present. Working as her own model, she uses make-up, wigs, and even protheses, to become one convincing persona after another, all stunningly photographed. Afterwhile, I began to wonder what she'd make of how I look, what cultural clues she'd seize on about my class, milieu, and values. Naked, we all look about the same, but after that, it's just about limitless what kind of person we want to project to everyone else, especially for women.
Sherman herself was at MOMA yesterday morning, apparently. A man who intercepted us in the last gallery told us he'd heard that from a docent. What does Cindy Sherman
really look like? She could have been standing next to me, and I wouldn't have known.
None of the photographs is titled, so the viewer's on her own decoding what it's all about. I found myself inventing lots of life stories for these people.
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| From the Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980. Sixty-nine black-and-white photographs. |
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| From Centerfolds/Horizontals, 1981 |
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| Untitled #458, 2007-2008 |
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| From Untitled Clowns, 2000 |
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| From Society Portraits, 2008 (all fictitious women) |
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