In 2016 Cindy Sherman completed a body of twenty photographs, published by Hartmann Books with a text by Betsy Berne. The pictures take up conventions familiar from 1920s Hollywood studio publicity: a woman placed before a backdrop, made up, dressed, and posed for the camera. The backgrounds, according to the publisher, are digitally manipulated to suggest old film sets. Sherman is credited here as photographer, and the volume presents the twenty images as a series rather than a scattered portfolio.
The series looks closely at that earlier Hollywood star system and at the kinds of female presence it produced. Sherman’s figures are characterized by conspicuous makeup, modern clothing, and seductive poses, and the publisher describes them as complex, independent women-of-a-certain-age who have clearly lived with strength and presence. Their staging occurs inside the image itself—in backdrop and persona alike—rather than only through quotation of earlier pictures. Photographer and essay author are distinct: the photographs are Sherman’s, the text is Berne’s.
The book is small: roughly 16.5 by 20.5 centimetres, 64 pages, 20 illustrations, hardcover, with English and German texts. Its scale suits the intimacy of the studio portrait, while the object is clearly a designed publication rather than plain documentation. Because the twenty photographs belong to a single series, the volume serves as a coherent record of one project rather than a selection.
