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 1950s and 60s film, B-movies or European arthouse 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 mined 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, an encyclopedia or a cataloging 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. One of the hallmarks of this body of work is that the prints themselves are in a way unremarkable.
These were made by Sherman to seem cheap. like throwaway prints. The publicity still was 8 by 10 inches, glossy, it wasn't treated like an artwork, and the format of these untitled film stills mimics that.