Untitled #145

Cindy Shermans Untitled #145 from 1985 belongs to the artists Mid-1980s Fairy Tales series, in which she abandoned the relatively restrained self-portraiture of the Film Stills for a more grotesque and theatrical mode that pushed the boundaries of the human form toward monstrosity and decay. In this chromogenic print, Sherman appears in prosthetic makeup and costume that transforms her face and body into something not quite human: the features are exaggerated, the proportions distorted, the skin tones unnatural, and the setting ambiguous enough to suggest a narrative without specifying one. The chromogenic (c-print) medium, with its saturation and surface gloss, gives the image the look of a fashion photograph or movie still, a quality Sherman deliberately exploits to heighten the dissonance between the familiar format and the disturbing content. Created during the period when Sherman was engaging with theorists like Laura Mulvey and the Critical Studies movement, the Fairy Tales series uses the conventions of commercial photography to expose the violence hidden in beauty standards and the instability of identity under the pressure of visual culture. The untitled format refuses narrative specificity, inviting the viewer to project their own anxieties onto the image.

Shermans mid-1980s work represents a turning point in the history of photographic art, moving from the postmodern critique of representation in the Film Stills to a visceral engagement with abjection and the body that influenced contemporary art, fashion photography, and feminist theory. Untitled #145 and its companion works opened a space for photography that was simultaneously conceptual, political, and affectively powerful.

A chromogenic print from Shermans mid-1980s Fairy Tales series that uses prosthetic transformation and commercial photography conventions to create an uncanny image of identity in crisis, pushing the self-portrait toward monstrosity and visual critique.