American Icons: “Untitled Film Stills”

These are snapshots of America’s collective unconscious.

Cindy Sherman grew up in the era when old movies filled our late nights. She wrote about going to a dinner party with her parents when she was a child, and ending up in the basement watching“Rear Window”alone. As an artist in the 1980s, she began taking self-portraits in costumes and settings that called those old black-and-white movies to mind — they were “stills” for films that didn’t exist, but might have. She would change in the back of a van and emerge on the street as an ingnue, a movie star, a soon-to-be murder victim. In a media-saturated age,“Untitled Film Stills”suggested that Sherman’s identity as a woman was constructed from other people’s narratives. They influenced a generation of artists who play with identity as a kind of performance. Photography curator Eva Respini sees her influence extending beyond the art world — to basically anyone who has ever taken a selfie.”The selfie is not about who you really are,” Respini says. “It’s about how you look best in the camera to your friends, creating a narrative of what you’re doing.”

(Originally aired October 11, 2013)

A selection of photos from Cindy Sherman’s original series:

Untitled Film Still 21, 1978

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York)

Untitled Film Still 25, 1978

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York)

Cindy Sherman’s latest self-portraits are on view at Metro Pictures gallery in New York through June 11

Untitled 578,2016

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures)

Untitled 577, 2016

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures)

Untitled 574, 2016

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures)

Untitled 579, 2016

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures)

Untitled 564, 2016

(Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures)