Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, the history of art is littered with figures who have redefined our relationship with images, but few have done so with as much audacity and relevance as Cindy Sherman, born in 1954. This American photographer, as elusive as she is omnipresent in her work, has spent over four decades constructing a dizzying exploration of identity that continues to challenge us with renewed acuity in the era of social media. Her work, which defies simple categorization, constitutes one of the most profound and coherent investigations into the nature of identity and representation in contemporary art.
In Sherman’s photographic universe, each image is a theater where she embodies a multitude of characters, creating stagings where she is both subject and object, photographer and model. This fundamental duality directly echoes the philosophical concept of “simulacrum” developed by Jean Baudrillard. For the French philosopher, the simulacrum is not merely a copy of reality but an autonomous reality that ultimately replaces the original, creating what he calls hyperreality. Sherman’s photographs perfectly embody this notion: her characters are not imitations of real people but constructions that expose the artificial nature of all representation. When she transforms into a 1950s movie star or a character from a Renaissance painting, she does not seek to faithfully reproduce an original but to create a new reality that lays bare the mechanisms of representation itself.
This aspect of her work takes on particular resonance in our contemporary society, saturated with images. As early as the 1970s, Sherman anticipated our current relationship with self-image, where everyone becomes the director of their own life on social media. Her “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980) now appear as a brilliant prefiguration of our selfie culture and Instagram filters. The fundamental difference is that Sherman consciously reveals the artifice, whereas social media attempts to conceal it. By systematically exposing the mechanisms of identity construction, she invites us to critically reflect on our own self-representation practices.
The artist pushes this reflection even further in her “Centerfolds” series (1981), where she subverts the format of erotic magazines to create unsettling images of vulnerable women. These large horizontal photographs, originally commissioned by Artforum but never published by the magazine, transform the male gaze traditionally associated with this format into a disturbing experience that forces the viewer to question their own position as a voyeur. Sherman appears in poses suggesting vulnerability or distress, creating a deliberate tension between the seductive format and the unsettling content. This series marks a turning point in her career, demonstrating her ability to use dominant visual codes to better deconstruct them.
The performative dimension of Sherman’s work constitutes another major aspect of her practice, echoing Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity. For Butler, gender is not an essence but a performance, a series of repeated acts that create the illusion of a deep-seated nature. Sherman masterfully stages this performativity: her successive transformations do not reveal a hidden identity but rather show that identity itself is a construction, a role we play. In her “History Portraits” series (1988-1990), she recreates classical paintings with unsettling precision while deliberately leaving the staging artifice visible: poorly adjusted prosthetics, apparent makeup, contemporary accessories clashing with these pastiches of old paintings.
This approach finds its extension in “Society Portraits” (2008), where she embodies high-society women. These portraits are not mere caricatures of wealthy women but a complex exploration of how social status manifests through visible signs: luxury clothing, jewelry, plastic surgery. Sherman reveals how these women perform their social class, just as her characters in “Untitled Film Stills” performed their femininity. Performativity thus becomes a guiding thread running through her entire body of work, linking her early explorations of gender to her more recent inquiries into social status and aging.
Sherman’s work is also part of a broader critique of stereotypes perpetuated by the media and popular culture. Her characters, sometimes pushed to the extreme of grotesqueness, function as a distorted mirror reflecting our own prejudices. In her “Clowns” series (2003-2004), she explores the boundaries between the comic and the unsettling, transforming these figures traditionally associated with entertainment into disturbing presences that question our relationship with normality and difference. This series also marks her transition to digital, allowing her to create psychedelic backgrounds that further accentuate the nightmarish dimension of these portraits.
Sherman’s use of new digital technologies is particularly intriguing. While her early works were created with traditional means—makeup, costumes, accessories—she gradually integrated digital tools into her creative process. This transition to digital does not represent a rupture in her work but rather a natural evolution that allows her to explore new possibilities while remaining true to her fundamental concerns. Digital manipulations enable her to push her transformations even further, creating characters that oscillate between the real and the artificial in a way that echoes our own relationship with imaging technologies.
In her more recent works, Sherman has focused on aging and how society treats older women. These images, in which she embodies mature women struggling against the effects of time, are particularly poignant in a culture obsessed with youth. She explores the often desperate strategies employed to maintain a youthful appearance while exposing the symbolic violence exerted on aging female bodies. These recent portraits demonstrate her ability to renew her critical gaze while deepening her core themes.
The artist does not merely critique existing representations; she creates a new visual language that unsettles our certainties. Her photographs are always “untitled”, deliberately refusing to guide our interpretation. This strategy aligns with Roland Barthes’s theory of the “death of the author”: by erasing her own identity behind her multiple characters, Sherman leaves the viewer free to construct the meaning of the work. Paradoxically, it is through multiplying herself that she manages to disappear. This approach resonates with Barthes’s conception of the text as a “tissue of quotations”, her images themselves being complex weavings of cultural and artistic references.
The question of the gaze is central to Sherman’s work. By controlling both the creation and reception of the image—she is simultaneously the observer and the observed—she subverts traditional dynamics of looking in art. This unique position allows her to deconstruct what Laura Mulvey called the “male gaze”, the masculine gaze that traditionally objectifies the female body in art and media. The women she embodies are never mere passive objects of the gaze: they look back, challenge the viewer, or seem absorbed in their own concerns, deliberately ignoring the presence of an audience.
Sherman’s influence on contemporary art is immense. She paved the way for those who explore issues of identity and representation through staged photography. Her work also anticipated many current concerns about virtual identity and self-presentation in digital spaces. In the era of social media, where everyone becomes the curator of their own image, her exploration of identity construction takes on new resonance.
The questions Sherman raises about identity, representation, and performativity are more relevant than ever. At a time when virtual identities multiply, when filters and avatars become extensions of ourselves, her work appears prophetic. She understood, long before the digital revolution, that identity is not a fixed datum but a shifting construction, a game of masks and mirrors. Her photographs invite us to reflect on our own participation in these contemporary masquerades.
Her ability to constantly reinvent herself, to explore new territories while remaining true to her fundamental inquiries, makes Sherman a major artist of our time. Her influence extends far beyond the world of contemporary art: she has changed the way we see and see ourselves, anticipating the upheavals in our relationship with images in the digital age. If her work continues to fascinate, it is because it still poses essential questions about what it means to be oneself in a world where images have become the primary vector of identity.
Sherman maintains a subtle balance between critique and empathy. Even when she pushes her characters toward the grotesque or the absurd, there is a deep understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms underlying our behaviors. Her work is never merely mocking or accusatory: it reveals the complexity of our relationships with our own images and those of others.
As we navigate an ocean of digital images, constantly constructing and reconstructing our identities online, Sherman’s work resonates with newfound power. She reminds us that behind every image lies a staging, that behind every identity is a performance. In a world where the boundary between the real and the virtual becomes increasingly blurred, her work invites us to maintain a critical and lucid gaze on the images that surround and constitute us.
Sherman’s legacy is not only in her formal innovations or social critique but in her ability to make us see differently. By transforming her own body into an infinite space of experimentation, she shows us that identity is always a construction, a process rather than a state. This lesson, more relevant than ever in the age of social media and virtual reality, makes her work a valuable tool for understanding our present and perhaps even anticipating our future.