Untitled #205 1989

Cindy Sherman made Untitled #205 without a date with, well, a camera of course! The subject stares out, swaddled in white fabric, a tableau vivant of a historical painting. I imagine Cindy, ever the chameleon, embodying this character, feeling the weight of the costume and the gaze of the lens. There’s a tension between artifice and raw emotion. The soft, diffused light heightens the vulnerability of the figure, while the slightly theatrical backdrop adds another layer of complexity. Sherman’s images speak to a long history of art, but I feel like she’s also asking questions about identity, representation, and the gaze. She makes me consider what it means to see and be seen, and how those acts can shape who we are. She's in conversation with generations of image-makers, asking us to think critically about what we see.