In her Untitled Film Stills, Sherman posed as various female characters from 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, film noir, and European art-house films we feel we must have seen. The series reads like an encyclopedic roster of stereotypical roles: the pert young career girl in the big city, the chic starlet at her seaside hideaway, the tough but vulnerable film-noir idol. “The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told,” Sherman said. Entirely fictitious, these “stills” deftly encapsulate the images of femininity that, through the media culture of movies, had a hold on America’s collective imagination at the time.
2019
Additional text from Seeing Through Photographs online course, Coursera, 2016
Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills is a suite of seventy black-and-white photographs in which the artist posed in the guises of various generic female film characters, among them, ingénue, working girl, vamp, and lonely housewife. Staged to resemble scenes from 1950s and ’60s Hollywood, film noir, B movies, and European art-house films, the printed images mimic in format, scale, and quality the often-staged “stills” used to promote films. By photographing herself in such roles, Sherman inserts herself into a dialogue about stereotypical portrayals of women. Whether she was the one to release the camera’s shutter or not, she is considered the author of the photographs. However, the works in Untitled Film Stills are not considered self-portraits.
Explore more
Cindy Sherman
American, born 1954 106 works onlineFor four decades, Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity, playing with the visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, gender, and photography.
Learn more →
Articles and videos
From MoMA Design Store
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.