How to disappear completely

In a recent BBC article, Cindy Sherman was labelled "the original selfie queen" - but the Beeb's own documentary Arena: Cindy Sherman #untitled suggests the exact opposite.

Sherman - who prefers to be known as an artist who happens to use photography as a tool, rather than as a photographer - may well feature in all of her pictures, but they aren't conventional self-portraits that give any insight into her personality; on the contrary, they're portraits of fictional characters whom Sherman has created especially for the camera. As she's quoted as saying, "It's more about I'm trying to lose myself, to really totally disappear." This is, after all, someone whose step-daughters claim is extremely shy and reluctant to be the focus of attention.

Over its hour running time, the documentary offers a succinct overview of the various phases of Sherman's artistic career - from the stills from imaginary films that betray the influence of Alfred Hitchcock and depict ill-at-ease characters whose backstories you can't resist inventing, to her recent enthusiastic embrace of Instagram and facial distortion apps.

Along the way, she's played menacing/tragicomic clowns, had an obscenely graphic period fuelled by feminist disgust (which has distinct parallels with the abject art of Cosey Fanni Tutti of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle), and created fake society portraits of female subjects. The latter pictures are arguably her most affecting work, in that the women are apparently determined/desperate to project their wealth and fight against the ageing process and yet are presented empathetically rather than as deserving of mockery, hinting at deeper psychologies.

The documentary's overall claim - that Sherman has been extraordinarily prescient and as such is very much an artist for our times - rings very true. In our visual media-saturated age, image is all, and reality is never unfiltered. Sherman's subject is not herself but the process by which identity is incessantly manufactured, manipulated and performed. We are, she suggests, forever putting a face on and playing a part.