These black and white pictures explore the stereotypes of film.
You see Sherman herself posing in a variety of guises that refer to
the publicity still usually shot on set and used to advertise a film.
She's referring to 1950's and 60's film, B movies or
European art house films, however, none of these photographs depict actual films.
These are completely fictional moments that are made to look like stills.
The success of this body of work is in the seemingly endless variation
of female types that Sherman has presented to us.
The girl on the run, the bombshell, the bored housewife, the vamp.
Sherman has mimed these stereotypes to great effect, and presented us with
a variety of characters that are familiar but also spark our own narrative.
While the photographs can be appreciated individually, their success really is in
their multiplicity than encyclopedia or a cataloguing of female types.
All of these photographs were set up kind of guerrilla style.
She carried around a little suitcase with a wig or some costumes, and then quickly
she would turn into that persona, snap a few pictures, and then develop them.