Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Janet Wolfson de Botton
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cindy-sherman-1938" aria-label="More by Cindy Sherman" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Cindy Sherman</a>
Film Still 27
Presented by Janet Wolfson de Botton 1996
actions: expressive
adults
advertising
arts and entertainment
cinema
clothing and personal items
dress: fantasy/fancy
emotions, concepts and ideas
fancy dress / role play
formal qualities
gender
leisure and pastimes
lifestyle and culture
make-up
music and entertainment
named individuals
objects
people
photographer
photographic
popular culture
portraits
recreational activities
self-portraits
Sherman, Cindy
smoking
social comment
society
weeping
woman
work and occupations
<p>Sherman presents herself as an actress in imaginary film scenes. These characters were derived from the plethora of images absorbed from film, TV, advertisements and magazines, as well as real acquaintances who served as role models in Sherman’s youth. Detached from any real scenario, Sherman’s Film Stills invite the viewer to construct their own narratives around the image.</p><p><em>Gallery label, December 2005</em></p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
8 December 2001 – 11 August 2002
2002-08-11
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2001-12-08
Telling Tales: Narrative Impulses in Recent Art [TL 2001]
Collection based display
5 December 2005 – 10 April 2007
2007-04-10
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2005-12-05
Sherman and Wearing
Collection based display
18 February 2016 – 12 June 2016
2016-06-12
18 February 2016 – 12 June 2016
2016-06-12
2016-02-18
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2016-02-18
Performing for the Camera
Exhibition
29 January 2020 – 19 July 2020
2020-07-19
29 January 2020 – 19 July 2020
2020-07-19
2020-01-29
Kunstforum Wien (Vienna, Austria)
http://www.kunstforum-wien.at
2020-01-29
The Cindy Sherman Effect. Identity and Transformation in Contemporary Art
Loan-out
Untitled Film Still #27
image: 975 × 683 mm
frame: 1200 × 890 × 30 mm
Presented by <a href="/search?gid=999999959" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Janet Wolfson de Botton</a> 1996
<p><i>Untitled Film Stills</i> is a series of sixty-nine black-and-white <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/photograph" title="Glossary definition for 'Photograph'"><span>photographs</span></a> made between 1977 and 1980. In them Sherman appears as fictitious characters in scenarios resembling moments in a film. She used vintage clothing, wigs and makeup to create a range of female personae which she then photographed in apparently solitary, unguarded moments of reflection, undress, or in conversation with somebody off-set and outside of the frame. The ‘stills’ are set in a variety of interior locations as well as outside in urban and rural <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscapes</span></a>. They were begun shortly after Sherman moved to New York city with the artist Robert Longo (born 1953). Sherman studied art at the State University College at Buffalo, New York between 1972 and 1976, producing a series of black and white photographs which resulted in <i>Untitled A</i>, <i>B</i>, <i>C</i> and <i>D</i> 1975 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sherman-untitled-a-p11437" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11437</span></a>-40). The following photographic series, <i>Bus</i>
<i>Riders</i> 1976 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sherman-untitled-p78495" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P78495</span></a>-508 and <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/sherman-untitled-p78535" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P78535</span></a>) and <i>Murder Mystery Series </i>1976, are the direct precursors to the <i>Film Stills</i>. Sherman has commented: 
<br/>
<br/></p>
<blockquote>In college I began to collect a lot of discarded accoutrements from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, more for my own personal wardrobe as well as for the sheer fascination with what those garments stood for. It was easy and cheap to collect all kinds of things in those days. I’ve always played with make-up to transform myself, but everything, including the lighting, was self taught. I just learned things as I needed to use them. I absorbed my ideas for the women in these photos from every cultural source that I’ve ever had access to, including film, TV, advertisements, magazines, as well as any adult role models from my youth. The resulting photo shoots were <i>very</i> brief. In those naïve days, I would sometimes take only about six shots for one scene and move on to the next, so that with one roll of film I could have six different set-ups.
<br/></blockquote>
<p>(Quoted in <i>Contemporary Art: The Janet Wolfson de Botton Gift</i>, p.99.)
<br/></p>
<p>
<br/>Initially Sherman photographed the <i>Film Stills</i> in the loft apartment where she and Longo lived. She took many of the pictures herself using an extended shutter release; others, particularly those set in outdoor locations, required a second person to take the photograph, such as her boyfriend, friends or family. Sherman’s father took <i>#48</i>, in which she appears as a vulnerable young woman waiting with a suitcase at the side of a darkening country road. 
<br/>
<br/>Real film stills are not stills from the actual film but are photographs taken to encapsulate aspects of the film for advertising purposes, to be shown on billboards or in magazines or newspapers. Sherman has explained that she titled this series of images ‘film stills’ ‘mostly because I was thinking of publicity stills like you’d see around 42<span>nd</span> Street, in boxes of hundreds of them for thirty-five cents each’ (quoted in Taylor, p.78). She has said that her intention was that they would ‘seem cheap and trashy ... I didn’t want them to look like art’ (quoted in Tomkins, p.78). Like real movie stills Sherman’s images evoke events in possible narratives which the viewer may invent or interpret in different ways, suggesting an original which never in fact existed. Like all of Sherman’s photographic series, they provide a range of fictional <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portraits</span></a>, usually of women, in which the artist operates as actress, director, wardrobe assistant, set designer and cameraman.
<br/>
<br/>Tate’s four <i>Film Stills</i> were reprinted under the artist’s supervision in 1998. All exist in at least two (sometimes three) <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/edition" title="Glossary definition for 'Edition'"><span>editions</span></a> of different dimensions: these <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>prints</span></a> are the largest size and were issued in editions of three. <i>#27</i> dates from 1979; this is the first print in the edition. 
<br/>
<br/><b>Further reading:</b>
<br/>Rosalind Krauss, <i>Cindy Sherman 1975-1993</i>, New York 1993, pp. 17-73, 224-6, reproduced pp.12-13, 27, 33, 62-3, 222
<br/>Monique Beudert, Sean Rainbird, <i>Contemporary Art: The Janet Wolfson de Botton Gift</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1998, p.99-101, reproduced pp.58-61
<br/>Paul Taylor, ‘Cindy Sherman’ (interview), <i>Flash Art</i>, no.124, Oct. – Nov. 1985, pp.78-9
<br/>Calvin Tomkins, ‘Her Secret Identities’, <i>The New Yorker</i>, May 15, 2000, pp.74-83
<br/>
<br/>Elizabeth Manchester 
<br/>November 2000/September 2001
<br/>
<br/></p>

Summary
2005-12-22T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Sherman presents herself as an actress in imaginary film scenes. These characters were derived from the plethora of images absorbed from film, TV, advertisements and magazines, as well as real acquaintances who served as role models in Sherman’s youth. Detached from any real scenario, Sherman’s Film Stills invite the viewer to construct their own narratives around the image.</p>

Display caption
2005-12-14T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
actions: expressive adults advertising arts and entertainment cinema clothing and personal items dress: fantasy/fancy emotions, concepts and ideas fancy dress / role play formal qualities gender leisure and pastimes lifestyle and culture make-up music and entertainment named individuals objects people photographer photographic popular culture portraits recreational activities self-portraits Sherman, Cindy smoking social comment society weeping woman work and occupations