Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Cynthia Morris "Cindy" Shermanis an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth19 January 1954
CityGlen Ridge, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
photography art photographer
One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.
cheer real struggle
So many things suddenly made sense for the clowns, for the whole idea. I’d been going through a struggle, particularly after 9/11; I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say. I still wanted the work to be the same kind of mixture – intense, with a nasty side or an ugly side, but also with a real pathos about the characters – and clowns have an underlying sense of sadness while they’re trying to cheer people up. Clowns are sad, but they’re also psychotically, hysterically happy.
smart thinking work-out
I don't analyze what I'm doing. I've read convincing interpretations of my work, and sometimes I've noticed something that I wasn't aware of, but I think, at this point, people read into my work out of habit. Or I'm just very, very smart.
cds needs bad-mood
I can't work without it [music]. And it has to be the right kind, because if it's not then I get into a bad mood. I work with a remote so that I can change CDs instantly if I need to.
art believe harder
Believing in one’s own art becomes harder and harder when the public response grows fonder.
believe thinking people
I think people are more apt to believe photographs, especially if it’s something fantastic. They’re willing to be more gullible. Sometimes they want fantasy. Even if they know it’s fake they can believe anything. People are accustomed to being told what to believe in.
photography thinking artist
People think because it's photography it's not worth as much, and because it's a woman artist, you're still not getting as much - there's still definitely that happening. I'm still really competitive when it comes to, I guess, the male painters and male artists. I still think that's really unfair.
feminist-art bullshit stuff
The work is what it is and hopefully it's seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I'm not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff.
real humorous horror-stories
In horror stories or in fairy tales, the fascination with the morbid is also, at least for me, a way to prepare for the unthinkable… That’s why it’s very important for me to show the artificiality of it all, because the real horrors of the world are unmatchable, and they’re too profound. It’s much easier to absorb – to be entertained by it, but also to let it affect you psychologically – if it’s done in a fake, humorous, artificial way.
nuts rude fuel
Inconsiderate, rude behavior drives me nuts. And I guess the inconsiderate rudeness of social ineptitude definitely fuels my work.
love dream life-and-love
Dreamers are those who have achieved in love and life, because it is a dream that got them there.
artist want males
I want[ed] to make a show of really big pictures, because you see male artists doing it all the time. It just seemed like such a big egotistical thing. I thought, 'I don't know that many women that really do that.... Damn it, I'm gonna do that-make this really big picture.'
mirrors knows
I’m really just using the mirror to summon something I don't even know until I see it.
thinking people world
We're all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don't spend any time, or think they don't, on preparing themselves for the world out there - I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.