Untitled Film Still #50

One of the most celebrated figures in contemporary art, Cindy Sherman made her groundbreaking series Untitled Film Stills between 1977 and 1980. The photographs evoke the 8x10–inch film stills, or “glossies,“ taken by photographers on movie sets and used to promote Hollywood productions since the silent film era. In each photograph, Sherman poses as a star actress in an imaginary movie, deploying cinematic conventions like pose, lighting, and camera angle to imitate the look and feel of films from the 1950s and ’60s. Using carefully chosen costumes and settings, Sherman’s images draw attention to the construction of stereotypical female types in popular media. This photograph alternately depicts the objectified or vulnerable woman: Sherman’s rigid pose takes on the lifeless quality of a mannequin frozen in time, but also suggests a moment of suspense in which a startling event may take place at any second.