“But the photographer Cindy Sherman — who knows more than most about the deceptions of selfies — has quietly been exploring Instagram’s potential for something more than self-promotion. She created a private account on the service last October while in Tokyo; last week, without warning, she unlocked her account and changed her handle to @_cindysherman . (She originally went by @misterfriedas_mom, in honor of her pet macaw.) At a stroke, she revealed not only quotidian ’grams of sunsets and lunches, but also more than three dozen distorted selfies, deformed by unnatural smudges, copious flares and kaleidoscopic reflections.
I can’t say why she decided to make public the nearly 600 photographs on her account, but I’ll call it an act of generosity from an artist who is less outgoing than most Instagram hounds. Her new mobile selfies are by turns outlandish, hilarious and poignant. They demystify the influences and experiments of a great artist, even as they also point to the gap between Ms. Sherman’s vital, unsettling practice of sideways self-portraiture and the narcissistic practice of selfie snapping.”