Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #43, 1979, belongs to the landmark series of Untitled Film Stills created between 1977 and 1980 that established the artist’s early reputation and made her a mainstay in the canon of post‐modernist art theory and practice. Set in Monument Valley, near the border of Arizona and Utah, the iconic scene of Untitled Film Still #43 recalls the John Ford Hollywood Westerns of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. The artist—assuming the role of director, set designer, make‐up artist, costume designer, and actress—poses in the guise of a generic female film character, passively sitting on a tree branch at the center of the composition, styled and displayed according to the fantasy of the male gaze. The format of the tableau, as a film still, and the pose of the subject, peering off into the distance, suggest the presence of a story, yet, the isolation of this moment within Sherman’s one-woman-show denies the spectator the action of a John Wayne Western. Without the satisfaction of a narrative arc, the viewer is left to contemplate the nature of their gaze and the construction of the object they behold.