Face Value

In a special project for W, the artist Cindy Sherman explores the slippery notion of appearance in the age of Instagram.

- Andrew Russeth

“I actually hate the idea of selfies,” says Cindy Sherman while discussing recent images she has been making with her iPhone. “People say”—she adopts a naive tone—“ ‘Oh, but you’re, like, the queen of selfies,’ ” and then her voice goes flat. “I really kind of cringe at that thought.”

Sherman, who turns 64 in January, has, of course, earned her place as one of today’s great artists by taking photographs in which she almost always appears as the only subject—affecting clowns in elaborate getups, self-serious socialites with impressive wardrobes and withering stares, early Hollywood screen stars late in their careers, and plenty of other characters who defy any succinct description.

But the images, she has always maintained, do not depict Sherman herself. “I don’t see it that way, no,” she says. Rather, Sherman exposes how culture shapes appearances, imploding such enforced conformity from within. Since she has long resisted autobiographical readings of her work, it has been intriguing lately to see her take to, and toy with, Instagram, a platform that thrives on interplay of the personal and the artificial, especially when it comes to self-portraiture.