Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and filmmaker born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. She is considered one of the most influential contemporary artists, particularly known for her self-portrait photography that challenges the boundaries of gender, identity, and the portrayal of women in popular culture.
Sherman’s early work focused on creating photographic series in which she portrayed herself in a variety of personas, ranging from Hollywood starlets and socialites to clowns and grotesque characters. Her images often referenced historical paintings and film stills, presenting a critique of the stereotypical depictions of women in media.
One of Sherman’s most significant bodies of work is the Untitled Film Stills, a series of black-and-white photographs created between 1977 and 1980 that depicts the artist in various roles inspired by classic Hollywood films. In these images, Sherman used makeup, costumes, and props to create elaborate scenarios that conveyed the complexity of the female experience.
Her Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), in which she put on guises and photographed herself in various settings with deliberately selected props to create scenes that resemble those from mid-20th-century B movies. Started when she was only 23, these images rely on female characters (and caricatures) such as the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, and the vulnerable naif. Sherman used cinematic conventions to structure these photographs: they recall the film stills used to promote movies, from which the series takes its title. The 70 Film Stills immediately became flashpoints for conversations about feminism, postmodernism, and representation, and they remain her best-known works.
Throughout her career, Sherman has continued to experiment with her own image, playing with different personas and identities. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has received critical acclaim for its innovative approach to photography and its contribution to contemporary art.
In addition to her photography, Sherman has also worked in film, directing and starring in several experimental movies that explore similar themes of identity and the representation of women. She has also collaborated with fashion designers, creating imagery for high-profile campaigns and magazines.
Sherman’s influence on contemporary art and photography is significant, with her work inspiring generations of artists to explore their own identity and the cultural forces that shape it. Her contribution to the feminist movement and her groundbreaking approach to self-portraiture have cemented her place as one of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey writes in her famous essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” about the subconscious way we see women and how they are depicted in Hollywood movies from the 1930s to the 1950s. She argues that the depiction of women in those movies is determined by a certain perspective that objectifies the female body. According to Mulvey, the movies made during that era are part of a patriarchal structure and they reinforce the portrayal of women as things to be looked at for the pleasure of men. The only purpose of women is to represent an object of male desire and to support the male lead in a movie but they carry no real meaning or have any importance on their own.
Mulvey describes women in this context “as a bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” This perspective in which women are used as passive objects that are fetishized and shown in a voyeuristic manner to please the male viewer is known as the male gaze. The black-and-white photographs of Cindy Sherman’s series Untitled Film Stills are reminiscent of movies from the 1930s to the 1950s and depict Sherman as she portrays women in different roles with the help of costumes, make-up, and wigs. They can be interpreted as challenging the male gaze mentioned by Mulvey and therefore as feminist art.
Many pictures of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills show situations that come across as uncomfortable, creepy, or even terrifying since we see the depicted woman in a vulnerable position. The viewer becomes an inappropriate spectator. We find ourselves in the role of a voyeur who preys on vulnerable women. We become confronted with the negative implications of the way the media – especially movies – depicts women. The male gaze is often present in Cindy Sherman’s artworks but she subtly changes the perspectives, expressions, and circumstances. Those changes expose this gaze that wants to stay hidden during the act of observing and objectifying the female body.
In Untitled Film Still #48 we can see a woman waiting alone on the roadside with her luggage next to her. The picture shows her back and indicates that she is not aware of being watched. The ominous scenery is enhanced by the cloudy sky and emphasis on the seemingly endless road. The picture makes the audience part of a threatening situation they do not necessarily want to be a part of. It even indicates that the viewer who is only able to see the woman’s back is the one who poses a threat.
In the works Untitled Film Still #81 and Untitled Film Still #2, this uncomfortable perspective is visible as well. Both pictures show a woman in either their underwear or only covered with a towel while they look at themselves in a mirror. They seem to be so concerned with their reflection that they notice nothing else around them. Both artworks reveal the problem of constantly representing women in a vulnerable and sexualized light for pleasure by making the viewer feel like a predatory voyeur.
The male gaze is also criticized through the image that the women themselves try to imitate in the mirror. They recreate seductive poses and expressions from movies to make their faces and bodies look like the idealized and fetishized versions of women that are represented in popular media. Sherman’s feminist art can be viewed as critical of this kind of depiction of women.
Laura Mulvey characterizes the depiction of women in her essay as passive, erotic, and accordingly made up to match male fantasies and desires. Cindy Sherman uses clothes, make-up, wigs, and different poses to imitate this portrayal of passive, sexualized women that comply with those fantasies. While Sherman still operates within the methods of the male gaze by portraying women in their underwear, heavy make-up, or typically female costumes, her artworks still criticize this way of representation.
The photograph Untitled Film Still #6 shows a woman in her underwear posing erotically in her bed. Her face, though, seems to parody the whole situation. The woman’s expression looks overly dreamy and even a little silly. It seems as if Sherman is making fun of the passive and typically feminine representations of women since she did not only pose for the picture but is also the artist that orchestrated the photo.
Some other artworks of Sherman also show women in a passive lying position, often seductively presenting their bodies or dressed in costumes that are considered feminine. The fact that these pictures are shown in an art context and not in a cinema as well as Cindy Sherman’s very active role in producing them indicates that the photos are critical of the male gaze. The woman, therefore, is no longer restricted to her role in front of the camera. By also being an artist, Sherman takes the active role of the creator. Her feminist art, therefore, criticizes the production of pictures by men for men by imitating stereotypical female representations from popular movies. They are a parody of an objectifying depiction of women in media and pop culture, made by an actual woman.
Judith Butler writes in her text “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” that gender is not something natural or something that constitutes a person by birth. Gender rather changes historically and is performed according to cultural standards. This makes the idea of gender different from the term sex, which describes biological characteristics. This gender is fixed through the act of repeating certain cultural behaviours that are believed to make a person male or female.
Cindy Sherman’s artworks seem to demonstrate this performance of gender by depicting stereotypical images of women that can also be seen in movies. The pictures illustrate the performative act of “being female” through Sherman’s changing use of wigs, make-up, and clothing. Even though every artwork of Sherman shows the same person, the artist’s masquerade makes it possible to portray various types of women that are all subject to the male gaze.