The unsettling photographs that Cindy Sherman has taken of herself over the past four decades pose numerous questions and explicitly shed doubt on photography as a medium that can be said to reflect reality. In 1977, Sherman enrolled in painting at State University College, Buffalo, NY, but changed to photography and began taking black-and-white ‘films stills’ in which she posed as various B-grade starlets from the 1950s and ’60s.

By the early 1980s, Sherman was using increasingly sophisticated props and makeup to stage fabricated fashion photographs of herself, such as Untitled #129. These striking and somewhat disturbing artworks challenged the images presented in women's magazines – a challenge that seems even more relevant today with the introduction of ‘airbrushing’ and similar digital editing techniques. Sherman has said that she 'isn't interested in being a photographer’, and that she primarily regards photography as a method for creating an alternate reality.