On Halloween, October 31st, 1985, photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron toted her trusty Hasselblad and tripod and arrived for a portrait session in downtown New York. Her subject was famous photographer and artist Cindy Sherman. Sherman once said, “I wish I could treat every day as Halloween and get dressed up and go out into the world as some eccentric character.” But this Halloween day, she would not be adorning herself with wigs and taking self-portraits “as the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, and the vulnerable naif” as Kristen Gaylord, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography, MOMA described some of her personas. When Barron arrived, Sherman was dressed in a simple shirt and pants; that was how she was photographed. Barron just presumed that she wanted to be photographed that way and did not ask her to change or get into one of her characters.

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