Untitled Film Still #21

Cindy Sherman

1978 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Between 1977 and 1980 Sherman photographed herself in a series of sixty-seven scenarios staged to suggest the cinematic tropes of midcentury Hollywood. Here, she assumes the guise of the Hitchcockian "career girl" alone on the streets of the big city. Sherman accentuates the dramatic artifice of her pictures, emphasizing those elements of production that often go unnoticed: camera angles, lighting, costumes, and backgrounds all come to the fore, triggering the stock narratives and characters from which our own identities are composed.

Artist

Cindy Sherman

Date

1978

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1992