Untitled Film Still #46 1979

Curator: Cindy Sherman's "Untitled Film Still #46," from 1979, presented as a gelatin silver print, challenges traditional notions of portraiture and identity. Editor: It's strikingly ominous. Just a hint of the human form obscured by the water and goggles, the silver print lends it an almost clinical detachment. There's a submerged anxiety. Curator: These "Film Stills" are interesting because they don't reference any specific films. Sherman is performing an archetype, a woman often seen but never truly known, inviting viewers to project their own narratives. This work was created at a time of important conversations within art criticism, film theory and cultural studies. Editor: Absolutely. Goggles, of course, are significant, appearing throughout history across all manner of diving figures, even comic book ones. What is obscured behind those mirrored lenses is of great interest to viewers. In other artwork contexts, these symbols suggest vision, and truth. Here? A degree of calculated concealment. Curator: Her work is deeply intertwined with the burgeoning feminist art movement. Sherman critiques the male gaze and the limited roles assigned to women in media, presenting herself as both subject and object, an agent of representation. Editor: The reflected light on the water adds a ghostly aura. Water in mythology and symbolism, also suggests themes of cleansing and birth. Yet, something seems off in the photograph, as if what lurks beneath can be resurrected, not washed clean. Curator: Many theorists have explored the complex relationship between artist, artwork, and audience with Sherman’s body of works, looking at the ways museums and galleries contribute to the social meanings embedded within them. The fact that the film stills have no source reference in film or visual culture only speaks to the degree in which mass media images permeate the visual and symbolic landscapes in the 1970s. Editor: It also gives a sense of how Sherman saw identity—malleable, staged, performed. These underwater mirrored eye figures are powerful motifs that speak of hidden depths. After our discussion, the water imagery becomes more potent.