Cindy Sherman (born 1954) is an American photographer who has taken a keen interest in the notion of women's identity and representations in society and through history. She has been exploring the feminine from various angles, staging herself as her own model in her series, since the late 1970s. Filmmaking codes and aesthetics have influenced this photographer: she uses costumes, makeup and hairdos to create characters and stereotypes ranging from starlets to femmes fatales. The brunette, blonde or red fake hair becomes an instrument for masquerades that step beyond the ends of self-portraits.
In line with the transvestite portrait or self-portrait tradition stretching from Caravage to Andy Warhol, this photographer becomes Lucille Ball (1911-1989), the well-known heroin of I Love Lucy, an immensely popular 1950s American sitcom featuring a bubbly redhead performing countless funny acts on television screens.
The black-and-white cliché underlines the mimicry between the two women: Cindy Sherman is posing with a three-quarter profile staring at the lens, and sporting the actress' curly hairdo. However, her cold expression and lipstick-clad mouth with a hint of a clown's sad pout sharply contrast with Lucille Ball's images, which hover between humorous and glamorous. Sherman is unrecognisable yet strangely familiar. She, and through her Lucille Ball, vanishes behind the artifices as if she was behind a mask. The black gloved hand's gesture holding the face also suggests that.
Throughout her work, Cindy Sherman, a chameleon in fake hair, indulges in disturbing pretences that smack of fiction and have inspired several other artists such as Carole Bellaïche and Bertrand Bonello. Her many faces hint at the metamorphoses that Alfred Hitchcock's, David Lynch's and Dario Argento's heroines undergo: they are all elusive and unsettling women and their changing hairdos say something about their duality.
