by Martha Schwendener




Cindy Sherman: She wasn't the first to photograph herself. That credit goes to Claude Cahun,
 David Lamelas, Ana Mendieta—or the Countess de Castiglione, if you want to dig back into the 
19th century. But Sherman has inspired a generation of artists weaned on the culture of MySpace–
YouTube self-presentation, which reached critical mass this decade. Tomoko Sawada, ZOE CROSHER,
Nikki S. Lee, Aneta Grzeszykowska, and K8 Hardy are some standouts of the genre, but Sherman 
herself created three good bodies of work this decade, which is a lot: the California ladies, the clowns, 
and the aging socialites. Someone once told me that it takes her three weeks to make a series, 
then she can take the year off (or, more likely, tend to the business of being Cindy Sherman).
 I don't know if this is true, but it sounds like a great artist-as-leisure-class fantasy to me.