Untitled Film Still #32
Untitled Film Still #32, 1979, Gelatin Silver Print
Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954)
#2019.0002.0001
Cindy Sherman is a well-known American photographer who is most famous for her evocative self-portraits in which she performs various roles, often using costumes, makeup and prosthetics to play with notions of gender and identity. Sherman began her career with an early series, Untitled Film Stills, where she used herself as a model to stage portraits suggestive of film stills from a wide range of movie and television genres. While the images draw upon easily recognizable cinematic styles, the narratives of the scenes remain ambiguous. By inserting herself into the photograph, Sherman reveals the artifice of its construction, calling into question the stability of such character tropes and unsettling stereotypical representations of women in film. The destabilization of familiar tropes is a theme throughout the artist’s work. Sherman, who as an artist has been able to capture myriad personas and moods throughout her work, challenges the viewer to question ideas of representation as well as widely accepted stereotypes proliferated by the media.
This black-and-white-photograph, Untitled Film Still #32, is part of the Untitled Film Stills series and, as in much of her work, Sherman used her own body as a medium. The image is reminiscent of a still from a film noir movie, and captures Sherman in three-quarters profile, dramatically lit from behind with a deep shadow over her downcast eyes. She raises a light to the cigarette that dangles from her mouth, the flame an eye-catching center-point to an otherwise dark image.
