UNTITLED FILM STILLS
CINDY SHERMAN, 1977–1980
These movies don't exist. That's the first thing. Your brain keeps trying to remember the title. Was this Hitchcock? Something Italian, maybe. Black-and-white, emotionally devastating, nobody says what they mean. Nope. Fake. All of it. In 1977, Cindy Sherman was twenty-three and new to New York, answering phones at a downtown gallery called Artists Space. The first six of these were shot at home, in the apartment she shared with the artist Robert Longo. Six photos. One imaginary blonde actress, caught at different points in a career that never existed. Wigs, cheap jackets, a tripod. Sherman handled the costume, lighting, pose, expression, then stepped into the frame. She was the actress, the director, the costume department, hair and makeup. The whole studio, except for the movie. And you know these women instantly. The hitchhiker. The secretary. The woman who just realized she trusted the wrong man forty-five seconds too late. Which is disturbing, because you've never met her. You've met the template. They look exactly like promotional stills. Not the movie, the advertisement for the movie. She printed them at about eight by ten inches, the size of a real studio glossy. Except there's no story. Just the suggestion of one. Your brain finishes it. You write the plot. You invent the danger. You supply the emotional damage. She stopped after three years. Sixty-nine photographs, then out. Didn't run it into the ground. In December 1995, MoMA bought the complete set. At the time, its film archive already held four million real studio stills. Four million photographs from movies that exist. And sixty-nine from movies that don't.