Cindy Sherman is a member of the Pictures Generation—artists of the 1970s and 1980s who grew up in a world saturated with images. They are concerned with consumerism, mass culture, and the role of imagery in society. Sherman upends the idea of the self- portrait by photographing herself in a multitude of personas, dressed in costumes and staged in invented settings. Her art is an inquiry into photography’s claim to tell the truth. As the model in these works, the artist is subject to a dizzying variety of self- portrayals. Here, she appears in the guise of a biblical patriarch, garbed in generic robes, lit from below as though by a campfire at some remote desert oasis under a starry night sky. It is less an authentic recreation of the ancient Middle East than the Hollywood version of an imagined Holy Land. The glow of the fire is a studio lamp, the constellations are a backdrop, and the bearded man is a woman. In other words, the image is the impossible photographic evocation of a figure from long, long ago, before photography. Sherman’s portrait is a multiplicity of fictions, an exploration of her own innumerable identities.