Cindy Sherman: “Photography knows how to lie very well”

This interview was conducted on February 25. On this date, the retrospective devoted to Cindy Sherman at the Vuitton Foundation was supposed to open three weeks later. We know the rest. Returning home a few days after the meeting, the American photographer, 66, has since remained confined to New York, which she told us as follows: “I made do with it, like anyone else, baking my bread , eating and drinking too much, without getting dressed or brushing my teeth before 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I didn't do anything at all, but I didn't intend to, since I just finished a big job. His Parisian exhibition finally begins on September 23.

In 2012, the MoMA in New York presented a retrospective of your work which was very complete. How is the one that takes place in Paris different?

It is even larger, with very recent works and others from the very beginning that had not been shown in New York. But I did not intervene much on the Parisian project. Maybe I deprecated one or two images, added two or three more, but in collaboration with the team. Commissioners do their job. Personally, I wouldn't know what to do if I had to organize an exhibition of my own work.

Does anyone know how to treat a blister on the heel of your foot!?

— Michael Thu Nov 15 23:06:23 +0000 2012

Would it be difficult for you to design a retrospective of your work?

For me, everything I've done fits together and hangs together. And since there have already been several retrospectives, I would have to wonder how to present something different. It is much better for an outside perspective to intervene.

Unlike that of the MoMA, the Parisian exhibition does not really follow the chronological order…

Not completely, indeed. For example, towards the beginning, there are very early works, but also very recent ones. Of course, you also have to take into account the different formats and dimensions of the rooms.

How would you describe your beginnings today, half a century later?

I would say that, contrary to what has been said about Warhol's influence, Duchamp was more important to me, with his essential idea that everything can become art. What interested me in Warhol came from Duchamp. And the portraits, Polaroid and glamor side of Warhol, that didn't really concern me. Or as an object of analysis, to be considered with a somewhat ironic distance; but not as a direction to follow. Besides, he seemed like a kind of god of art, king of pop… I don't consider myself a pop artist, not at all.

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