“I’m trying to erase myself more than identify myself or reveal myself. That’s a big, confusing thing that people have with my work: they think I’m trying to reveal these secret fantasies or something. It’s really about obliterating myself within these characters.”
—Cindy Sherman
In 2010, POP magazine commissioned Cindy Sherman to produce a stand-alone booklet for inclusion in an upcoming issue of the British fashion publication. Having produced several successful fashion collaborations in the past, Sherman turned to Chanel, conceiving of a series that would pair their vintage haute couture with landscape photographs taken in Iceland during the volcanic eruption earlier that year. Following the initial project, Sherman altered and expanded upon the images before debuting them at Metro Pictures in 2012.
Untitled #546 is a monumental example from the series with two self-portraits mounted together, side-by-side. While the backdrop was digitally manipulated to enhance the painterly sense of the sublime, the towering scale of Sherman’s figures in the foreground dwarfs the landscape, thus inverting the classical trope. This uneasy juxtaposition paired with the figures’ awkward poses results in an image where fantasy, fiction and the absurd collide.