oved herself from her photographs altogether, using stand-in plastic body parts strewn over desolate landscapes of organic matter in various stages of decomposition.
Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the youngest of five children. When she was three the family moved to Huntington Beach, Long Island. Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer, and neither was interested in art. Sherman has credited her father with interesting her in technology, and he was always collecting cameras and snapping family photos. Her family encouraged her when she drew or painted and when she dressed up and applied makeup, and she started a collection of wigs, vintage clothing, and accessories which she was attending the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, where she enrolled in 1972 to study art:
Following a traditional curriculum centered on painting, she was at first unaware of recent developments such as minimalism and conceptualism. Through her friendship with fellow art student Robert Longo, she was exposed to the latest artistic currents and read art journals voraciously to fill the gap in her knowledge. Among the early influences on her art were Vito Acconci, John Baldessary, Duane Michaels, Gilbert & George, Bruce Nauman, and William Wegmen.
The accepted view at the time was that painting was no longer viable, and this corroborated Sherman's own experience with the medium. She painted surrealistically but found it boring because she could not say what she wanted in this fashion. Her first photography course was highly technical and also bored her, but she tried with a second that was more conceptually oriented and persuaded her to abandon painting for photography.
The approved art in the early 1970s when she started was such that it took a forbidding and even vengeful attitude toward viewers, and the approved art at the time tended to be ephemeral or inaccessible, such as temporary installat...