EYE CANDY

A Look Back at Cindy Sherman’s Many, Many Faces Over the Decades

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman has been photographing herself since the 1970s, and yet the artist has managed to never look the same in front of the camera twice. By 1997, she’d created enough material for MOCA to mount her first major American retrospective, though it wasn’t until this summer that Sherman landed the same honor in the U.K. And yet, Sherman has proven to be so prolific that there’s an upside to that delay; the London National Portrait Gallery‘s new exhibition now houses the most massive collection of Sherman’s various iterations to date, stretching back to her landmark Untitled Film Stills series of nearly 70 black-and-white photographs, which challenged the conventional notions of how women are depicted on-screen. Of course, some of Sherman’s change in front of the camera over the years has been inevitable—a fact that she also turned into material in 2016. “I wanted pretty pictures of older women, women who are trying too hard but succeeding, pulling off an extreme look,” she told W of one of her more recent, glamorous series, where she can be found as a CEO, a real estate mogul, and heiress, and more women of a certain age. Take a look back at those photographs and more of her seminal work over the years, here.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #466, 2008. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #92, 1981. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #54, 1980. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #122, 1983. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Cover Girl (Vogue), 1976/2011. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #204, 1989. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #15, 1978. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #74, 1980. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #577, 2016/18. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #56, 1980. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #17, 1978. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #413, 2003. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #574, 2016. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #48, 1979. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.

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Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #602, 2019. Featured in the exhibition “Cindy Sherman,” on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London through September 15, 2019.