Cindy Sherman

The Centerfolds catalogue represents Cindy Sherman's Centerfolds series in its entirety. There are twelve photographs in the series, and they are all represented in full page color layout.

Sherman, strongly influenced by performance art, which promoted the concept of the artist as director, actor, and storyteller, moves effortlessly through all of these arenas playing the roles of photographer and subject, but neither in the traditional sense. These images are not typical self-portraits. Instead Sherman creates provocative and ambiguous narratives that emphasize emotional and psychological personifications.

"Invited by Artforum to design a portfolio to be reproduced in the magazine, Sherman set out to exploit the centerfold format. The pictures are horizontal, the figures shot close up, life size (2 x 4 feet), then cropped as if forced into the frame. The background has been greatly reduced, the figures fill the frame with a corporeal presence that has been described by one critic as "embarrassingly intimate." Sherman develops each character through the process of working up a costume and further defines it by colored lights and gels." Lisa Phillips, Cindy Sherman, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987

This book contains a new essay by Lisa Phillips and three original reviews of the Centerfolds from 1981.