Untitled 153

Untitled #153 is a color photograph made by American visual artist Cindy Sherman in 1985. In 2010, a print was auctioned for $2.7 million, making it one of the most expensive photographs ever sold at that time.

Untitled #153
Artist	Cindy Sherman
Year	1985
Type	Photograph
Medium	Chromogenic color print
Dimensions	170 cm × 120 cm (67 in × 49 in);
Owner	Anonymous

History and description

The picture resulted from an invitation of the magazine Vanity Fair to create a series of photographs inspired by fairy tales. The photographs would never be published by the magazine but are amongst some of her best and more representative work. They tend to be more dark and grotesque than the sources where it is supposed to have taken inspiration, and aren't directly inspired by any specific fairy tale. The current picture is, like its usual in the artist, a self-portrait, depicting a woman, lying in the ground as a corpse, covered with mud in what appears to be a natural environment.

Eva Respini said of the picture: “Even when Sherman is in the photographs, she appears doll-like and artificial, as in Untitled #153. Reminiscent of a crime scene photo, the picture shows a dead woman lying on the ground and covered in dirt, her glassy eyes opened wide, as if shocked by her own violent demise. Unlike a police photograph, however, this larger-than-life glossy picture is full of seductive detail, with rich descriptions of the colors and textures of the gravel background, the woman’s mussed hair, and her waxy face."

Public collections

There are prints of the photograph at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City.

See also

• List of most expensive photographs