A member of the third generation of a foreign service family, Madeline McGehee has spent her life traveling. She has lived in several countries, including the United States, France, Switzerland, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Syria, and she presently lives in Qatar. She began to experiment with video and photography as a young girl and has continued to explore video and photography as a design student. Her work often depicts elaborately staged scenes with herself as the central figure. These tableaux are at once familiar and not, often with an allusion to the inappropriate.