Untitled #352 [Head Shots (Hollywood/Hampton Types)]

For the series entitled Head Shots (Hollywood/Hampton Types) (2000–2002), Sherman again selected a smaller format and representational manner reminiscent of her works from the early 1980s. The banal image structure looks like portraits that might be found in an ordinary photo studio – but without interior design or props. In the simplicity of the settings, however, Sherman succeeds in precisely staging very specifically outlined types and characters. All of the characters are middle-aged women whose to some extent exaggerated appearance reveals much about their longing for youth and beauty, for glamour and success, and likewise reveals their failed ambitions and expectations. In the ambivalence between an artificial superficiality, extroverted pose and uneasy personality that hides in plain sight behind fashion, jewelry and makeup, a longing to correspond to the ideal role models found in the media world coincides with personal failure. The despair about this is literally written all over the characters’ faces.