HUNTER/GATHERER
DOLLFACE
In my travels to antique fairs and flea markets throughout the United States over the past six years, I have come across well over a thousand dolls and hundreds of mannequins. Most of them are fairly innocuous, but occasionally I stumble on ones whose features, expression, or condition draws my attention. They are photographed on site, as displayed by the dealer, using available light and an iPhone.
Other than occasional candid snapshots of family and friends, I have never been comfortable taking pictures of people. But, to state the obvious, a photograph of a person is not the person. It is a two-dimensional representation of physical appearances captured by the camera and typically presented as ink on a surface or pixels on a screen - a far cry from the complexity and depth of a living, thinking, feeling human being. My “sitters” are not alive. They are inanimate re-presentations or references to people, so my photographs of them are yet another monumental step away from real people. They have no interior monologue. No thoughts, feelings, passions, or desires. No personal past or memories. No heart. No soul. They, and the photographs they inhabit, are fictions. Yet, oddly, they can speak to us, and we, each in our own way, can hear their secrets.
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