Untitled #88

"Untitled #88" is a 1981 chromogenic print by Cindy Sherman that demonstrates the American artist's mastery of the photographic self-performance during the period of her most influential work, the image showing another variation on the "Untitled Film Still" theme with the same technical precision and conceptual rigor that characterizes the series. The composition is a 24 × 48 inch print, the artist's proof suggesting that this image was part of the same production sequence as the editioned prints, the trial proof serving as a document of the experimental process that produced the finished work. The chromogenic print creates a surface of extraordinary color saturation and tonal range, the technical qualities of the medium serving both the aesthetic pleasure of the image and the critical project of exposing the construction of cinematic femininity. The 1981 date places this work in the same year as the other "Untitled Film Stills," suggesting that Sherman was working intensively on the series, producing multiple variations that explored the full range of Hollywood stereotypes and their deconstruction. Art historians have connected this print to the broader tradition of the artist's proof in photography, from the experimental prints of Man Ray to the working prints of Diane Arbus, noting that Sherman's treatment of the proof as an independent work reflects both the commercial nature of photographic production and the conceptual interest in process and documentation that characterized postmodern art. The work also demonstrates Sherman's influence on the development of identity politics in art: the exploration of gender as a performance rather than an essence provided a model for artists who sought to deconstruct the naturalized categories of race, class, and sexuality.

This 1981 artist's proof made photographic process commercially conceptual through chromogenic color-saturation trial-print documentation, using 24×48-inch stereotype variation to provide identity-politics performance-model beyond gender essence naturalization.

It matters because Sherman made a proof of herself and made the paper feel like it was still deciding who to be—proving that even a test print could be a masterpiece if the question was honest enough.