The Gentlewoman* No.19 came out in the spring of 2019 with Cindy Sherman on the cover, photographed by Inez & Vinoodh. It also came out with a different Cindy Sherman on the cover — the same issue, the same afternoon, one cover yellow and one white.
Almost everything else she has made, she has made alone. She finds or makes the costume, applies the makeup, sets the wig, fits the prosthetic. She arranges the lights, frames the picture and trips the shutter. Behind the camera and in front of it since the mid-1970s, and for most of fifty years nobody else in the room.
Her earliest work imitated exactly this kind of picture. The *Untitled Film Stills* were made to look like publicity photographs for films that never existed. Forty years later a real magazine put her on a real cover, twice.
Last year *The New York Times* asked whether she ever works with assistants.
"Never. I tried a couple times, and I've even had a friend or relative model for me. But I was too concerned with their time. Are you having a good time? Can I get you some water? Are you hungry? Do you want to take a break? I wasn't being myself. I am freer when I am alone, and I take more chances."
The same interview asked her to name a favourite artwork by someone else.
"Anything of [Francisco] Goya's. He is one of my heroes. Or [Marcel] Duchamp."
Goya spent his last years in a house outside Madrid, painting the Black Paintings straight onto its walls, for no client, seen by nobody in his lifetime. Duchamp sat for Man Ray as Rrose Sélavy — a hat, a fur collar, another person's hands arranged at his throat — his own face as the material. Still, set a table for the three of them, and she might ask if anybody wants water.
Working alone is already a stage. We work alone here too.
Both covers are here. [Yellow Cover] [White Cover]
