Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Cindy Sherman is one of the leading American artists of our time, creating staged and manipulated photographs that draw upon popular culture and art history to explore female identity. By visually examining the ways in which gender is dressed, made up and culturally enforced, Sherman has for many become an icon of feminism and postmodernism. Provocative and engaging, the visceral physicality of her photographs is the key to their dramatic power.

In this retrospective, essayists Amada Cruz, Elizabeth A.T. Smith and Amelia Jones offer key insights from several distinct vantage points, positioning Sherman's work within the trajectory of feminist art history as well as revealing her influence on the art of the last twenty years. More than 270 images show the breadth of Sherman's body of work, from the Untitled Film Stills of the 1970s to series such as Centrefolds , Fashion , Disasters , Fairy Tales and History Portraits , as well as photographs influenced by surreal artists.

Also included are intriguing excerpts from Sherman's notebooks, selections from her contact sheets and numerous Polaroid studies, all of which shed light on the artist's process.

Cindy Sherman: Retrospective is an essential reference and guide to the work and ideas of this extraordinary artist.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

Cindy Sherman has taken self-portraiture and masquerade to the highest heights and the campiest lows, bringing the shady ambience of B-movies to art photography while exploring the plexus of narcissism, from its silliest manifestations to its most provocative expressions. Sherman explores the implications of role-playing and fantasy, seeing and being seen, and society's perceptions of women, eroticism, and consumerism in her photographs, creating resonant images and supplying art critics with much grist for their mills. In her contribution to this retrospective volume, Amelia Jones begins with the remark that "much ink has been spilled over Cindy Sherman," and, obviously, the flow continues, but Jones, Cruz, and their colleagues provide just the sort of commentary Sherman's work demands, and the photographs themselves are engaging, both viscerally and intellectually. Sherman has been in costume before her own camera for more than 20 years, earning the right to a major traveling exhibition and speculation as to what she'll come up with next. How many selves can a self be? Stay tuned. --Donna Seaman

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Elizabeth A. T. Smith, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago since 1999, was formerly curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she organized exibitions including "Blueprints for Modern Living: History and legacy of the Case Study Houses," "Urban Revisions: Current Projects for the Public Realm," and "At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture." She has also curated exhibitions on the work of artists including Cindy Sherman, Rebecca Horn, Lee Bontecou, Uta Barth, Toba Khedoori, and Catherine Opie.

She was Adjunct Professor in the School of Fine Arts' Public Art Studies Program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and has published and lectured widely on a variety of topics in contemporary art and architecture.

(Bowker Author Biography)