Sherman, Cindy. Cindy Sherman Retrospective.

Thames & Hudson, 1997. Reprint 2001. Stiff illustrated French wraps, very good, with a few signs of wear on covers and a black line on bottom of text block. 220 pages.  Issued in conjunction with a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and in Los Angeles.  Essays by Amanda Cruz, Elizabeth A.T. Smith, and Amelia Jones. 151 plates, lengthy list of prior exhibitions, and extensive bibliography.  

About the book: “This comprehensive catalogue traces the career of Cindy Sherman, examining her achievements as one of the leading American artists of our time. By exploring the myriad constructions of female identity and the body in our culture, Sherman imitates and confronts assorted representational stereotypes, becoming for many an icon of the contemporary concerns of feminism and postmodernism.  Essayists Amanda Cruz, Elizabeth A. T. Smith, and Amelia Jones offer keen insight and observations from several distinct vantage points, demonstrating that Sherman's work is a lens through which to view contemporary art and its ongoing concern with the profound issues of the structures of the self. More than 200 images show the breadth of Sherman's body of work, from the Untitled Film Stills of the 1970s to series such as Centerfolds, Fashion, Disasters, Fairy Tales, and History Portraits, as well as photographs influenced by surrealist 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 (born 1954) is a seminal American photographer, artist, and film director renowned for her transformative conceptual self-portraits that critique gender, identity, and visual culture. Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Sherman studied painting and photography at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she co-founded the artist-run space Hallwalls and shifted her focus to photographic performance. She emerged as a central figure of the Pictures Generation in the late 1970s with her breakthrough series Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980), a collection of 70 black-and-white photographs in which she staged herself in archetypal female roles evocative of B-movies and film noir. Serving as her own model, costume designer, makeup artist, and director, Sherman has continually reinvented her practice through series exploring fashion, art history (History Portraits), grotesque surrealism (Sex Pictures), and social media culture (Instagram Portraits). A MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the Praemium Imperiale, Sherman has had major retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Portrait Gallery in London, cementing her standing as one of the most influential contemporary artists of the post-war era.