Plagiarism – this is often how one might vulgarize the work of Cindy Sherman. As an artist, Sherman works alone. Photographer, model, hair-dresser, makeup artist, costume designer, and stylist, her talents are multiple and have allowed her to stage a certain taste for provocation as well as an incredibly precise aesthetic. Composed between 1977 and 1980, her series of 69 photos Untitled Film Stills is the proof of her chameleon-esque touch. Within a real setting, she presents 69 characters as an echo of the multiple visions of what it means to be a woman, from the supposedly brainless bimbo starlet to a juicy bookstore with a sexually objectified woman in between. All of Cindy Sherman’s strength resides in her ability to dexterously manipulate avant-gardism and a sentiment of familiarity.
When this series of 69 solitary women appeared on the international art scene, Cindy Sherman found herself facing an amorphous spectator who had been delighted for decades with their own relentless, dogmatic consumption of images supposedly of real women. Constructed by and for this spectator, her vision is familiar but unidentifiable – free to construct their own stories, the spectator never grasps the true face of the artist. Cindy Sherman never reveals her personal self so that she’s able to deconstruct the very notion of identity; her stylized photography thus becomes a tool for a sort of protest. Untitled Film Stills puts the aesthetics of B movies and actresses of the 50s and 60s into black and white. Each film still is a reconstitution of classic films in the Italian neo-realism genre, or of Hitchcock of Douglas Sirk films.
The subject here is the woman herself. She is alone in the image, arranged in diverse situations but always stereotyped. The artist thus brings another dimension to these images by being both subject and creator, actress and spectator. It’s in this way that her work is revolutionary, since finally a female photographer is able to put a certain distance between the representation she’s offering. This is quite the saving grace in a macho, patriarchal world. This first series introduced the artist to the art world, but all of her work bears in it this same feminist touch that’s either directly or indirectly opposed to any and every norm imposed on women – whether it be their behavior, their body, or simply their very being.
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