Artists have long alluded to the form and aesthetic of a film still, a photograph made on a movie set for publicity purposes. Traditional film stills are typically not isolated from the actual film footage, but are rather posed specifically for still photography or else captured on set. Despite their limited nature, film stills can contain a large amount of visual information regarding the film’s narrative. This element has intrigued many visual artists over the years. Most famously, photographer Cindy Sherman made her Untitled Film Stills series, which comprised sixty-nine black-and-white photographs, beginning in 1977. For each Untitled Film Still, Sherman costumed herself and posed as an archetypal female film character. While the imagery she created was not drawn from any particular film, the characters she inhabits are easily recognizable types. By appropriating the visual vocabulary of Hollywood, Sherman’s Film Stills effectively critique the portrayal of women in popular culture.

Other artists have interpreted the distinctive aesthetic of film stills in their own ways. Like Sherman, photographer Bruce Charlesworth’s work explores the narrative embedded within the imagery of film stills. Instead of creating his own imagery, John Baldessari took actual film stills as the starting point for some of his works: cutting them, hand-painting dots over figures’ identifying features, and otherwise altering them. Other contemporary artists who have probed the aesthetics and implications of the film still in their work include Tacita Dean, Matthew Barney, the artist collective ASCO, and Luke Butler.