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Cindy Sherman began the Bus Riders Series, her first work on the theme of personality, in 1976 while still a student at Buffalo State College in New York. Photographed while waiting for a bus, the travellers are none other than the photographer herself who, wearing make-up, disguised and role-playing, ironically embodies different social and cultural stereotypes.

With a keen eye for American society, the Bus Riders Series highlights the constructed aspect of any identity. Poses, clothes and facial expressions are all clues allowing a character to be identified. Between performance, theatre and photography, this series, along with the film Doll Clothes, also in the Pinault Collection, launched Sherman's conceptual experiments.

The Bus Riders Series was shown for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the Tri Postal in Lille during the “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) exhibition in 2008.