Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto thinks of himself not only as a technically skilled photographer, but as a conceptual artist as well. Since his first series titled "Dioramas" in the 1970s, his works embody the mystifying fakeness that has drawn fans to natural history museum dioramas and wax museums for years. In 1999, the Deutsche Guggenheim commissioned Sugimoto to produce a similar series, "Portraits", focusing on Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London, where he photographed the most realistic wax mannequins of historical figures against a black background.