HANDS ON

“AND what would you like as a present from me?”
“A doll.”
“But I gave you a doll last Christmas and one for your birthday!”
“Yes.”
“So you want to have many dolls?”
“Yes.”
“Now tell me, what sortove dolls do you like best? Small ones or big ones? Baby dolls or dolls dressed as grown-ups? Soft dolls, wooden dolls, or…”

“Dolls, please, just dolls to love!”

Bettina [Ehrlich], Dolls. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. qtd in The Doll, Carl Fox

This is one of the photographs taken on my recent shoot, this particular photo was taken in my bedroom. I'm still coming to an understanding of why I made the doll suit, and what it means to me. I enjoy the innocence of the quoted story written above, however for honours I need to pull apart the why of the attraction.

Originally I think I made the suit so that I could pretend to be a doll, instead of a human being, just for a little while. I love imagining dolls, and all toys, to have a fantastic inner-life, of which us humans are unaware. They are secretly conversing on some level, and remain blasé in the face of daily human toil. In her book On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection Susan Stewart describes this phenomenon:

"That the world of things can open itself to reveal a secret life- indeed, to reveal a set of actions and hence a narrativity and history outside the given field of perception- is a constant daydream that the miniature presents".

When I made the doll suit, I was trying to escape this humanness for a minute, and relate to the world by positioning myself sortove of outside of it. In actual fact, when it came time to model the suit for the photographs I found being inside the doll skin oppressive to the point of uncomfortable. I spent most of my time inside with my eyes closed, listening to the photographer's suggestions, and moving my body, without really engaging her. My movements felt sluggish, and weighted.

I want to do a series of photographs with either somebody else wearing the suit, and me, or me as me, and somebody wearing the suit to see what a real person looks like besides this soft cotton lycra pretender...