"I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding of women. These characters weren't dummies; they weren't just airhead actresses. They were women struggling with something, but I didn't know what. The clothes make them look a certain way, but then you look at their expression, however slight I may be, and wonder if maybe "they" are not what the clothes are communicating... I definitely felt that the characters were questioning something." —Cindy Sherman
Widely considered as some of the most influential works in the post-war era, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills marked a watershed moment in the artist’s conceptual and photographic practices. Forming a suite of seventy black and white photographs, the series show the artist in the role of “generic” female characters of 1950s and 1960s Hollywood film noir and B movies. Cindy Sherman’s characters in these photographs, are inspired by the movies she grew up watching, and her own misgivings towards sexuality and the characterization of women in media and the public domain: 'to pick a character like that was about my own ambivalence about sexuality - growing up with the women role models that I had, and a lot of them in films, that were like that character, and yet you were supposed to be a good girl'
In Untitled Film Still #34, Sherman clearly plays the role of a temptress. Her provocative pose is accentuated by the disheveled bed linen, the haphazardly donned men’s shirt she is wearing, and the worn-out romance novel at her side. The contextual ambivalence is intentional and allows room for the audience to make their own interpretations and reflections. The success of the series, and in this work in particular, is in its multilayering of charm, wit and seduction while boldly challenging depictions of women in popular media and its impact on women’s own view of themselves and their self-expression.