Cindy Sherman - Untitled film stills

Another artist who in his photographic works refers to iconography, and uses staging as a method of creative work, is Cindy Sherman.  In her work the artist does not confine herself to using only well-known themes of paintings. The source of inspiration is especially popular culture. One of the main issues that she analyses in her work is feminine identity and she does this by using iconic images that are easily recognizable in society. 



Sherman is an artist who uses herself as a model. But Sherman’s photography is not a matter of traditional self-portraits. Although she was the model in the photographs, she was not their subject. These are not self-portraits. The artist rather treats herself as the director and actor in one. Sherman creates theatrical settings with props and special backgrounds. She then takes her place in these scenes, transformed by makeup, wigs, costumes and sometimes special light to assume a general stereotypical female role.

 Her now famous series is ‘Untitled Film Stills’, made almost thirty-five years ago at the end of 1977.  The black and white photos, which number sixty-nine, were created such that they seem to have originated from existing films. They display the artist disguised as film stars in different backgrounds.  Sherman is the sole protagonist in every photograph, whether she is seen in the corridor, coming out of the building stairs,  or at night by the roadside. At times we see her in a neat jacket and a blonde wig, at others wearing an overall. Thematic and formal associations between the individual photographs are suggested, but remain vague. That name 'Untitled' underscores the deliberately generic nature of the images.  These are images that are fake stills from movies that were never made. 

Cindy Sherman prefers them to be known as “types” and feels that they represent female archetypes such as the archetypal housewife, the prostitute, the woman in distress, the woman in tears, the dancer, and the actress. In effect, artificial presented scenes enchain our attention “to the politics of representation, particularly as a response to a desiring male gaze pointing to and presenting clues toward deciphering the undercurrents of feminine cliché images, especially as to how it is defined through the representation of women in film.”  In this way Sherman’s images have raised challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art.


text from b.s.