Hello and welcome back. I'm Alice.

Long before there were selfies, there was Cindy Sherman, one of the most influential contemporary

artists in America. Cindy Sherman began taking photographs of herself when she was an art student in the 1970s,

and to this day she remains the person both behind the camera and in front of it.

But unlike the selfies of today, Cindy Sherman's photos never shout,

I was here or look at me.

They are not self-portraits.

Well, I definitely feel like in my work I'm hiding.

I'm not, I don't feel like I'm revealing anything like some people might think.

So, yeah, the most successful pictures for me are the ones where I don't recognize anything

of myself, and it's just, literally seems to be, you know, like another character that comes

through.

The characters in Cindy Sherman's works range wildly.

Some are B-movie actresses or seated figures from classical paintings or clowns.

Quite a few of her photos are disturbing.

We'll get into that a little later.

The settings, costumes, makeup, and lighting are all carefully orchestrated and composed to

explore ideas about artifice, appropriation, transformation, and identity. You might expect

the artist behind these photos to be outrageous, showy, maybe egotistical.

But when our interviewer, Gail Eichenthal, went to talk to Cindy Sherman, she found quite

the opposite to be true.

Their thoughtful conversation follows on this episode of What It Takes, a podcast about

...