Cindy Sherman began taking self-portraits in 1977 for her series known as the Untitled Film Stills, where she portrayed herself in various roles and personas inspired by B-movie actresses. Through these portraits, she commented on and questioned the representation and stereotypes of women in society and media. Rather than traditional self-portraiture, Sherman used performance and different costumes and personas to assume roles constructed by social and cultural values rather than her own identity.

1. Cindy Sherman

2. Cindy Sherman (1954-) Uses photography as her medium and has done so with much success. “ There was nothing more to say through painting. I was meticulously copying other art and then I realised I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.” After her 1976 graduation, she moved to New York and began taking photographs of herself in a series of 69 photographs known as the Untitled Film Stills . This is her most well known and recognisable body of work.

3. "Untitled Film Still #6" 1977 What is the subject this photograph is portraying? What connotations/influences does this photograph draw on? Does this image respond to the historical portrayal of women as object? If so how?

5. Untitled film still #7 What cliché’ does Sherman illustrate here? Sherman peers from the Piano glass doorway, like a chic starlet at her seaside hideaway.

6. Cindy Sherman Untitled Film Still # 10, 1978

7. Untitled Film still no.14 The domesticated sex kitten? The goddess as dutiful housewife? What cliché is Sherman playing out in these two works?

8. Untitled Film Still #11. 1978. How would you stereotype a Cindy Sherman persona?

11. Cindy Sherman, Untitled (Film Still #30) , gelatin silver print, 1979 If this were a real photograph, how would our interpretation of it change?

12. This is a frightening photograph. Two darkened windows frame a battered woman's head. She is stunned, mouth opened in shock. Her face is severely bruised; her wide-opened eyes blackened. Sherman, presents her subject in an unforgiving close-up. If this were a real photograph of an abused woman, we could find it an invasion of privacy and too difficult to look at. But it is not a photograph of an actual person. It is a staged scene. Cindy Sherman, Untitled (Film Still #30) , gelatin silver print, 1979. If this were a real photograph, how would our interpretation of it change?

13. Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills #13 “ The luscious librarian”

14. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, #15, 1978. Gelatin-silver print, 9x 7 inches. Edition 2/10. How do Cindy Sherman’s works comment on Hollywood and in Media Representations in general? Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, #15, 1978. Gelatin-silver print, 9 3/8 x 7 7/16 inches. Edition 2/10. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council and Executive Committee Members. 97.4573. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, #15, 1978. Gelatin-silver print, 9 3/8 x 7 7/16 inches. Edition 2/10. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council and Executive Committee Members. 97.4573. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, #15, 1978. Gelatin-silver print, 9 3/8 x 7 7/16 inches. Edition 2/10. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council and Executive Committee Members. 97.4573.

16. Untitled Film Still #58" Streetwise and world weary Damsel living it fast in the big city. What cliché is Sherman playing out in this work?

17. Untitled Film Still #48 1979, reprinted 1998

18. How do Sherman’s photographs relate to the Artistic tradition of Self portraiture?

19. Contrary to the media images they appropriate, which may require a transparent sense of realism to sell an illusion, Sherman’s stills have an artifice that is heightened by the often visible camera cord, slightly eccentric props, unusual camera angles. Traditionally, self-portraiture has been a form of auto-biography. There is an attempt at self-exploration, self-definition, and self-revelation. Not Sherman. Her work is more about assuming roles for the camera to immortalise than it is close to the tradition of self-portraiture. She rather casts herself as director and actress. Just as her photographs are artificial realities, so too do viewers become aware of how the roles she feigns are constructed, not natural—the result of social values, not nature. How do Sherman’s photographs relate to the Artistic tradition of Self portraiture?

20. Untitled #93"

21. Untitled 96"

22. Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977–80) have been canonized as a hallmark of postmodernist art because they utilize mass-media codes and techniques of representation in order to comment on contemporary society. Andy Warhol used pop-culture as raw material for his art. For Sherman it is her whole artistic vocabulary –and it comes ready made. Though billed as explorations of female identity, their appeal is misogynistic. Contextualising the work of Cindy Sherman Her work ‘not art photography, but art, period. “ She has succeeded in presenting her work as art, not photography, and has avoided the lower sales price and more modest attention that photographers are accustomed to receive.”