Anna Gaskell has said that her work is more influenced by film and painting than by the conventions of photography. Indeed, Gaskell’s working method is more akin to that of an astute movie director than to a camera-wielding photographer. Drawing inspiration from a wide array of literary and cinematic sources, her works are made in series that form what she calls "elliptical narratives." The subject matter she photographs for these "narratives" is staged—from the selection and costuming of the young girls who are invariably her subjects, to her careful control of the lighting, camera angles, and exaggerated cropping. The results are vaguely disturbing, leaving one to question what is happening in these images.

Untitled #73 (resemblance) is from a larger body of work titled that she undertook in the spring of 2001 while an artist-in-residence at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. This series deals with the notion of creating an artificial person and was inspired by such literary sources as The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Tomorrow’s Eve by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Gaskell dressed female students from the school in white lab coats and cast them as young technicians undertaking this bizarre experiment. But unlike the protagonists in the stories that inspired her, the girls in Gaskell’s photographs are attempting to build their creator, an artificial "mother." The pictures in the series suggest a disquieting narrative that is ambiguous, nonlinear, and open to complex interpretations ranging from ethical debates about biotechnology and cloning to feminist issues of gaining control over one’s body and self-image. In this photograph, although the "creation" is about to be unveiled, it will undoubtedly leave the viewer with more questions than answers.

Object label from 2007 installation