Since the late 1970s, Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) has employed a performative practice of photographing herself in different guises, producing some of the most iconic and influential images of the postwar period. A master of masquerade, she dramatically transforms her physical self into a huge cast of characters—from suburban housewife and Hollywood starlet to Renaissance aristocrat and jaded art denizen—using makeup, costumes, and staging to challenge notions of gender and identity. Untitled #188 (1989) belongs to an important group of photographs produced in the late 1980s in which Sherman removed herself from the composition, exploring instead the possibilities of using inanimate objects as proxies. Staging a sea of electronic refuse and other commercial detritus, she presents a scene of technological obsolescence and environmental degradation that anticipates current (and future) concerns regarding the profusion of consumer waste within the global landscape.