Cindy Sherman

Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the township of Huntington, Long Island.<br /><br /> Sherman became interested in the visual arts at Buffalo State College, where she began painting. Frustrated with what she saw as the medium's limitations, she abandoned the form and took up photography. "There was nothing more to say painting," she later recalled. "I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead." Sherman has said about this time: "One of the reasons I started photographing myself was that supposedly in the spring one of my teachers would take the class out to a place near Buffalo where there were waterfalls and everybody romps around without clothes on and takes pictures of each other. I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this. But if we’re going to have to go to the woods I better deal with it early.’ Luckily we never had to do that." She spent the remainder of her college education focused on photography. Though Sherman had failed a required photography class as a freshman, she repeated the course with Barbara Jo Revelle, whom she credits with introducing her to conceptual art and other contemporary forms. While in college she also met Robert Longo, who encouraged her to record her process of "dolling up" for parties. Together with Charles Clough, Longo and Sherman created Hallwalls, an arts center. Read Less