Cindy Sherman is an American photographer, born 19th January 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, United States, whose work consists primarily of photos which depict herself in many different contexts and as various different imagined characters. Sherman usually inserts herself into a dialogue about stereotypical portrayals of women in her photographs, which resemble scenes from 1950s and 1960s films.

Sherman has played with the visual and cultural codes of gender and photography. Shortly after moving to New York, she produced her Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980) starting when she was 23, where she dressed up as imaginary characters and photographed herself in various settings. These around 70 Film Stills immediately became a point of discussion for feminism, postmodernism, and representation, and still remain Sherman’s best-known works.

The Untitled Film Stills she produced seem to deliberately rely on female characters and caricatures in movies, and she used cinematic conventions to stage these photographs. Sherman was always interested in experimenting with different identities, she explained, “I feel I’m anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren’t self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear.”

Image Analysis

This is a film photo by the photographer Cindy Sherman. There is one subject in this photograph. The focal point is Cindy Sherman by herself in the foreground sitting outside in a light dress on a tree branch and slightly to the right of the middle, which shows me the composition follows the rule of thirds. In this image, the lighting appears to be natural daylight on a cloudy day. The midground and background features a barren desert-like landscape, with occasionally a large rocky structure, stretching far into the distance. No aspects of the photo are overexposed or underexposed, and the contrast appears to be not too strong. The depth of field is sharp so I believe the aperture is f/11, as the background and midground is clear and not blurry. The shutter speed appears to be 1/125, and the image is slightly grainy, so I believe the ISO is around 6400.