Untitled Film Still #65, 1980

Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” series (1977–80) consists of photographs recalling black-and-white movie stills. Each one plays on archetypes of femininity that crystallized in postwar film culture: the dark-haired diva in front of the vanity, chic starlet at a seaside highway, foxy librarian, icy sophisticate, and washed-up movie star, or, as here, young maid—a minor character, a girl in trouble, perhaps. It is Sherman herself who stars in this photograph, yet it is not a self-portrait. Across the series, the artist dons wigs, makeup, and costumes and strategically uses lighting and framing so that she disappears into the clichéd roles of, say, heiress or bombshell—to the point that there seems to be no real, authentic Sherman in the first place. The implication is that selfhood is built on the pictures that movies, and media more broadly, provide, which generate the social types we then internalize.