Product type:
Photography
40.64 × 23.81 cm
Digital C-print on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Type DPII paper
Edition of 629 copies
The edition is signed directly on the reverse by the artist. One signature per group of three (triptych)
Framing: Museum quality
With Untitled, Cindy Sherman has opened a previously hidden chapter of her archive. The three photographs were created around the year 2000 in connection with her famous Head Shots series—yet they remained unpublished for more than two decades.
As is so often the case in Sherman’s work, the staging of identity is at the center here as well. The artist transforms herself into a character reminiscent of an aspiring actress: ambitious, vulnerable, and caught somewhere between self-image, expectation, and projection.
It is precisely this ambivalence that makes the work so powerful. At first glance, the three shots appear almost classically beautiful. Yet behind this lies the very insecurity with which Sherman has played for decades: Who is this person? What role are we seeing? And how much of it is real?
The photographs were captured on experimental, expired Polaroid slide film. The presentation as a three-part sequence evokes an old film strip and reinforces the association with Hollywood, casting, fame, and the many careers that never went beyond a headshot.
Sherman herself had originally held back the images because they seemed too "pretty" to her compared to other works in the series. This very fact makes their later release particularly interesting: more than 25 years later, she showed three works from this early shoot for the first time, providing insight into a part of her oeuvre that had previously existed exclusively in her personal archive.
The limited edition was published in support of the Museum of Cycladic Art.
