CURATOR Aaron Lister

This show draws from Cindy Sherman’s collection of found photographs, scrapbooks, and albums. It includes over 200 photographs taken at Casa Susanna, a 1960s upstate New York retreat for cross-dressing men run by Susanna (Tito Valenti) and her wife Marie—a master wig maker. Casa Susanna was a safe space where guests could freely express what Susanna called ‘the girl-within’. These were private photos taken by and passed among members of the Casa Susanna community, hidden from a hostile outside world. Sherman found the album containing these photographs at an antique fair in New York City in the early 2000s.

The exhibition also includes albums and scrapbooks that once belonged to families, lovers, and fans. ‘Bobby and Cindi’ was Sherman’s first found scrapbook. It previously belonged to star-crossed lovers, whose identities are known only through the names scrawled across its pages. There is an album dedicated to a minor actor, Charles McClelland, active in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, whose IMDB profile suggests a career limited to generic roles such as ‘Detective’, ‘Cop’, and ‘Brakeman’. Other albums document an American GI’s travels through the Pacific, a romantic retreat to Denver, a circus troupe and the construction of a Massachusetts highway. Sherman describes looking at these albums as ‘like looking into a stranger’s life, just without many facts, just what they show and tell you’.

Here, we also see these photographs through Cindy Sherman’s work. The use of photography to perform and assert femininity at Casa Susanna anticipates Sherman’s explorations into gender roles and identity construction. The expressions, gestures and movements of the people in all the photographs look like Shermanesque performances to camera.

This show is presented alongside our major show Cindy Sherman.