Cindy Sherman: Little Girls Play Dress Up, But I Always Tried To Be A Monster Instead Of A Fairy | Cindy Sherman

I posted a mirror selfie on Instagram last night, I explained to Cindy Sherman. There were so many things to consider. Was the lighting and angle flattering? Did I capture my best side?

She laughs. “I find it fascinating,” she says, “this whole tradition of taking a selfie in front of a mirror. You can see how a person poses, the way they hold the camera. There might be different outfits every day, but you’re still in your elevator. In a way, it becomes a conceptual photography project. It’s funny.”

It’s a strange experience to discuss thirst traps with the woman who invented the selfie. We meet at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, Greece, where an exhibition of Sherman’s early work has just opened. It’s 40 degrees and humid, even the Acropolis is closed for the afternoon. But sitting across from me in an exhibition room, the 70-year-old is effortlessly cool and elegant. She’s wearing a white Loewe T-shirt, white shorts and Prada shoes, her silver hair tied back in a low ponytail. She’s softly spoken, kind and far more accommodating than you’d expect from someone of her level of success.

To say that Sherman redefined portrait photography is an understatement. Her signature practice of transforming herself into characters ranging from saints and endangered secretaries to grotesque clowns and elderly ladies lunching (acting as her own makeup artist, hairstylist, stylist, and director) has influenced countless contemporary portraitists. She says her photos are lies, and that she is constantly trying to erase herself in order to appropriate stereotypical female characters from television, film, and advertising.

Which isn’t so far removed from social media, I say. Are we all projecting a distorted image these days? I really think technology is changing the world right now, she says. I can’t imagine growing up with social media. It must be really hard for a young person to navigate it without feeling so awkward. Everyone is a content creator now or wants to be an influencer.

The exhibition, Sherman's first in Greece, brings together more than 100 of his early works. It includes his groundbreaking series Images from the untitled film (1977-1980), which consists of dozens of black-and-white photographs inspired by 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, film noir, B movies, and European art-house cinema. Sherman photographed herself evoking librarians, hillbillies, seductresses, and more. She is Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, and Anna Karina, though her heroines are never named, united only by their rebellious refusal to follow convention.

In a 1980 series, Rear Screen Projections, she mimicked a technique used by filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock (as a child, she watched Rear Window 10 times in a week) by filming herself and her background separately and splicing the two images together.

“I was more impressed or influenced by film than by visual art,” Sherman recalls of her early days. “I wondered why she was in this situation, doesn’t she know it’s dangerous?” It was also a way of dealing with being a vulnerable young woman and moving to New York, feeling the awkwardness and terror of a big city. It was a way of playing up self-confidence.

Sherman grew up on Long Island. Her father was an engineer for the Grumman aircraft company and her mother was a teacher. She studied art at Buffalo State University, where she had to confront her shyness. She would come out in character and stand quietly in a corner of parties, wearing clothes and makeup she bought at thrift stores. It was after her boyfriend at the time suggested she document her transformations that her idiosyncratic artistic voice began to emerge. She discovered that photography was much more fast-paced and conceptual than painting.

So she moved to New York at 23 and, over the next few decades, continued to use fashion design, prosthetics, and technology to interrogate female identities and the role of women in society. She played so many characters that the real Cindy Sherman became something of an eccentric mystery. In 2012, when MoMA organized a retrospective of his workSeveral participants thought they saw her in disguise; one said she was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, another believed she came in a big costume.

It wasn't true at all, but it was fascinating to me, she said, smiling.

Where does her desire to dress up come from? It’s actually related to my upbringing, as the youngest of five children, she tells me with the self-awareness of someone who has been through therapy. There was a nine-year gap between me and the next child, and a 19-year gap between me and the oldest. I realized that my family had had a whole other life before me. It was like a myth to me.

Eventually, I thought that maybe they didn't want me the way I was, so I had to try to become a different person. Back then, a lot of little girls played dress-up. But instead of trying to be a princess or a fairy, something cute and feminine, I was always trying to be a monster, a witch, or an old lady.

The exhibition comes at a time when Greece is experiencing a surge in violence against women. In response, the museum, which also houses famous marble figurines from the 3rd millennium B.C. interpreted by scholars as representations of a female deity associated with fertility and rebirth, wanted to show how Sherman criticized society’s representation and treatment of women.

Whether it’s her Color Studies series, which shows women in private moments, or Centrefolds, which references erotic images from men’s magazines, her photographs center the female body. This has sometimes been divisive. Because the women in Centerfolds appear melancholy, vulnerable, or fearful, New York magazine’s critic Jerry Saltz have described them as the sexiest and least sexy images ever seen, while some feminists have condemned them as titillating.

“I consider my work feminist, but I don’t think it’s about hammering a message into someone’s head,” Sherman says. “It’s subtle, because I’m a subtle person. I don’t think I’d be a good lawyer to argue with anyone. I’m terrible at quoting things or quoting anyone’s opinion. That’s why I leave the images untitled. I think everyone’s going to interpret things differently, and I can’t control how someone’s knowledge of art history is going to affect the way they view my work.”

Nevertheless, the debate surrounding Sherman's work has made her a sensation. In 2011, Centrefolds' Untitled #96 sold at auction for $3.89 million, making it the most expensive photograph ever made at the time. She has also received countless awards, including a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Does she think the representation of women in the media has improved? I think women are more aware of their place in society, their rights and their power or lack thereof, she says. They’re also a little more aware of how our appearance is policed, how we try to conform to what society expects of us. But it’s hard to know. The whole selfie culture and selfie tools that automatically correct your skin tone or remove your imperfections can be harmful to young minds that are trying to figure out their place in society.

But Sherman likes to play with some of these tools herself. In recent years, she has post Instagram portraits She uses apps and AI to distort her features. She looks pretty weird in all these pictures, a fitting commentary on the dissociative nature of social media. I find it quite amusing, actually. But I'm a little frustrated now because every time I try to create a new image for Instagram, I feel like it's not new enough.

I explain to her that it's both funny and scary that she once had to go through a whole style creation process and now she can just press a button. Is she worried about the threat posed by AI?

I can definitely see the threat that it could pose, especially with these deepfakes. But every time I write something like “Middle-aged woman alone in a forest,” like Cindy Sherman, what they come up with is so unthreatening to me that I laugh. It’s such a bad version of my work. But some of the faces I’ve created with AI are fantastic. It helps me think differently about what’s possible.

Today, Sherman is trying to figure out what's next. “I don't feel like I'm retiring, but getting older changes the work,” she says. “When I was younger, I could play young and old characters, now my scope is limited.”

She has had many adventures, not only professional but also personal. She was married to videographer Michel Auder for 17 years (during which time he struggled with heroin addiction), before dating filmmaker Paul HO and musician David Byrne. Today, she enjoys the landscapes of Athens with her new partner.

It reminds me, she listened to the Billy Braggs song about her, Cindy of a thousand lives? Yes, I was very flattered, especially since we have never met. But I think we are all made up of slightly different lives.

And with that, we take a selfie together and say goodbye.