Untitled #103
Untitled #103 is a photograph from Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills’ series. It shows Sherman in an exaggerated feminine and sexualised pose wearing a nightdress that falls away from her body in an erotic gesture. Grabbing her hair away from her face, Sherman wears makeup to accentuate the plumpness of her lips, forming a focal point of the image. Using props, costumes and facial expressions to perform different identities in front of the camera, Sherman’s images like this one that form the ‘Untitled Film Stills’ series resemble women from mid-20th-century B movies and the film stills used to promote them. These images rely on cinematic conventions and caricatured female characters such as the unhappy housewife, the blond bombshell, or the jaded seductress to interrogate the intersection between eroticism and femininity. Sherman’s photographs, like Untitled #103, prompt the viewer to question what they are looking at in relation to mass media images of women. Her practice is particularly noteworthy due to the fact that she is both performer and photographer, and therefore takes on a subversive agency in her role as both artist and subject.