Cindy Sherman Influence

Film Stills

This project critically engages the work of Cindy Sherman, particularly her Untitled Film Stills series (1977-1980), which examines the construction of female identity through cinematic archetypes. Sherman’s photographs reference familiar film tropes without depicting specific characters, instead presenting imagined figures shaped by cultural expectations, narrative suggestion, and visual codes.

Rather than reproducing Sherman’s imagery, this project uses her work as a conceptual framework to question how archetypes continue to form identity. I respond to her exploration of femininity by constructing my own set of photographic archetypes, drawing from personal experience while acknowledging their relationship to broader cultural narratives. The work examines how identity can be both performed and internalised.

The twelve photographs function as staged self-portraits, where I act as both subject and author. These images are not representations of myself, but fictional characters that exist between autobiography and collective symbolism. Through this process, I investigate how photographic self-portraiture can be used to critique representation, rather than simply reflect it.