Cindy Sherman, dressing up...

  Dressing up was a popular thing to do when I was a little girl. it was normal for girls to dress up barbie dolls, or themselves, trying on their mothers clothes, wearing high heels and playing different roles. There is no apparent reason or rationale behind most of those costumes, which makes sense given it's only when we are little and not aware of the real world. One person however has found that dressing up can conjure up different accounts from different people at anytime. In these images, photographer and artist Cindy Sherman redefines dressing up by presenting self-portraits of other people through herself. But how can we judge an adult woman which still is playing with her identity? It's hard to judge her, and her work, even after going through most of her photographs, as there's some ambiguity as to who, what and why Sherman photographs these women in the first place. 
  I think maybe that's because all of the women posing on her images are Sherman herself being different people through the same medium. These self-portraits aren't self-portraits after all, but rather commentaries on cultural stereotypes of women in popular media and society as a whole. 

The New York Times, Cindy Sherman Unmasked

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/02/19/arts/design/20120219-SHERMAN-7.html

  Sherman first came to the public's attention when she presented her Untitled Film Stills. Here, she photographs herself in black-and-white in different costumes and locations which are reminiscent of Hollywood films of the golden age. Sherman left those images untitled so that the viewers would be able to come up with stories of their own. However even with the images alone, it's easy to cast these women in stereotypical roles of the devoted housewife, the loyal secretary, the sultry romantic interest or some other generic plot device.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/arts/design/moma-to-showcase-cindy-shermans-new-and-old-characters.html?pagewanted=all

  She continued to act out roles for her photographs, at one time reenacting nobles and aristocrats in old paintings in her history portraits, at another donning on the colorful and sometimes scary makeup of clowns, becoming both anonymous and recognized in her artworks.
  On a very basic level, Sherman is simply acting out characters from her imagination, on a deeper level she discards her own identity to portray that of another for a split-second, and on an even deeper level, she tears down the very definition of photography that what is in captured by the camera is objective and truthful.
Or this could all be just Sherman's way of fulfilling her childhood wishes of dressing up through her life. Part of me feels jealous that she can still play like I did as a little girl, but although she has grown up, she's taken the game of dressing up to another level.

The New York Times, Cindy Sherman Unmasked, Carol Vogel, 16/02/2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/arts/design/moma-to-showcase-cindy-shermans-new-and-old-characters.html?pagewanted=all