Untitled #145

Cindy Sherman’s staged photographs explore the pervasive effects of mass-media images on individual identities. Since the late 1970s, the artist has served as both photographer and model for a large cast of fictional personalities created primarily through costume, hair, makeup, and lighting. In 1985, after receiving an invitation from Vanity Fair to contribute photographs based on fairy tales, Sherman began making disturbing, gruesome images, such as Untitled #145, that counter the happily-ever-after bedtime stories associated with the genre. Instead, she captured narratives filled with anxiety and implied violence, explaining, “In horror stories or in fairy tales, the fascination with the morbid is also, at least for me, a way to prepare for the unthinkable. . . . That’s why it’s very important for me to show the artificiality of it all.”