Since the late 1970s Cindy Sherman has donned an array of personas to explore how women are perceived and presented in Western culture. 

Her iconic "Untitled Film Stills" series is a 20th-century masterpiece; a compelling body of work that ushered in a generation of appropriation and criticism of iconography, gender, and cinema tropes. It was arguably one of the first photo-based projects to be embraced and considered as contemporary art, rather than simply photography. 

At the end of the 20th century, Sherman began to revisit her early work, created just prior to the "Untitled Film Stills". In particular, she began to print some of the fantasy portraits from the late 70s when Sherman began disguising herself as various characters she either personally encountered or were familiar archetypes.  

This image is notable in her oeuvre as it is one of the few examples of Sherman disguising herself as a boy. While her practice bears deep connections to drag and queer performance, Sherman has only disguised herself as a man in a very small number of images. This is one of the earliest ones. 

Through the nuances of gesture, gaze, and costume,  in this pseudo-self-portrait, Sherman assumes the persona of a schoolboy with furrowed brows and heavy, sullen eyes that peer downward. Hat in hand, the character pouts in front of a blank wall stripped of context.

Sherman's attention to setting and costume masks the artist’s own identity and emphasizes the malleability of staged photography. This intimate silver gelatin print is a remarkable example of Sherman’s most formative and influential period of art-making.

Sherman’s work is represented in every major public collection including SF MoMA, Tate Gallery (London), Centre Georges Pompidou (Pairs), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC).

Courtesy of Caviar20