Project Description

Cindy Sherman is most known for her experimental portraiture and reappropriation of female stereotypes found in film. She typically uses herself as a model for her photographs, assuming multiple roles as hairdresser, director, and costume designer. Sherman is very concerned with women’s roles in culture, and how women have been silenced. In this photograph, Sherman posed herself with an open and worn textbook, as well as wearing a white, almost labcoat-like, garment. The glasses and stars behind her head give an image of a woman who is well educated, but her facial expression gives a sense of the deficiency of female representation in male-dominated fields such as the sciences. Sherman’s work often speaks to ways in which women are treated in unequal ways compared to men. This image is left untitled to let the viewer ponder the role of women in society, and perhaps to call attention to how that role can be changed.

Object Details

Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954)
1985
2014.5.3
20" X 16"
Photograph
Departmental Purchase