Cindy Sherman

MoMA's 2012 survey was the first major American account of Cindy Sherman's work in nearly fifteen years, and its catalogue does what the exhibition did: it puts thirty-five years of self-staged photographs in one sequence and lets the accumulation make the case.

Published by the Museum of Modern Art for the exhibition of 26 February to 11 June 2012, organized by Eva Respini with Lucy Gallun, the 264-page volume reproduces roughly 180 photographs from the mid-1970s onward, including work made for the show and not previously published. Every major body of work is represented — the Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), the centerfolds (1981), the history portraits (1989–90), the head shots (2000–2002) and the later series on aging and social display. Respini's essay reads the reception of the work across three decades rather than narrating a career; Johanna Burton reconsiders the recent series, and a conversation between Sherman and John Waters gets at her working method. The exhibition travelled to SFMOMA, the Walker Art Center and the Dallas Museum of Art.

Sherman, born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey in 1954 and formed in the artist-run scene around Hallwalls in Buffalo, has used herself as the sole model for almost the entire body of work without producing a single self-portrait. The subject is always the type, the costume and the picture convention rather than the person.