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Library Journal Review

Krauss provides a provocative study of Sherman's impact as an artist and the pervasiveness of photography itself. The reproductions, many in color, are abundant, splendidly executed, and often as potent and startling as the originals. Sherman, one of the true masters of contemporary photography, is best known for photographing herself in various incarnations. The subject, however, is not the artist as much as the concept of woman-as-spectacle. Columbia professor Krauss, the author of several important books and essays on art in photography and editor of October magazine, suggests that by unveiling the offhanded, everyday grotesqueness in artistic depictions of females, Sherman effectively subverts the accepted convention of woman as generic, nonmale object to be gazed upon. The artist examines and expresses her disgust by utilizing the very thing that is disgusting, exemplifying tradition as protest. Each period of Sherman's work, from the early Untitled Film Stills to the more recent History Portraits and Sex Pictures, is discussed here in detail through a rubric of theories by Lacan, Freud, and Derrida; nonetheless, the text is surprisingly accessible, lucid, and free of technical jargon. This first sagacious and comprehensive book on this significant artist is recommended for all contemporary art and photography collections. --Douglas McClemont, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.