Monthly Featured Photographer - July 2014

Camera: Fujifilm Finepix S9600

This camera is a no-nonsense tool that does all I need it to - quite surprisingly so at times.

My photography is a hobby and I am not therefore forced into the rigour of professional repeatability. It has always been for me a matter of capturing the moment, and in that moment and its choice, together with beauty of composition, texture and other qualities, is the art. It is the capturing of the unrepeatable. This is why working with posable mannequins is rather fun as they don't mind how long they sit there . . . allowing other things to be got right, or for the sun to come out, or disappear as required. The stories come about in the nature of 19th century "Magic Lantern" presentations before television and the moving image captured the imagination. Simple, often painted or lithographed glass slides were projected onto a screen and the projectionist narrated stories which were often simple but charming. It's in that spirit that my dolls tell their stories . . .

Perhaps in my stories a vague idea might arise, based upon what they might have to wear clothes, or wig, and their context, where they might be. In spirit I ask the dolls what they would like to do and from this comes the inspiration of the story that they'd like to tell that day . . .

I think my work with Aira and Chloé and Thera with her 168plus body and harem of character heads has been significantly advanced by having enjoyed inflatables over the years and learning how best to try to bring them to life as best I could for photos. Inflatababes aren't the easiest to bring to life and yet, in the end, with one or two I was able to. A particular need to do so was needing a model for ebay adverts for inverters where I was competing with Chinese companies featuring their products with models to draw the eye - and the expense and difficulty of engaging live models who would then allow their photos to be used for ebay pages.

But when silicone dolls entered my life, since childhood I had lived around photographers and film companies using houses as film locations. As a result, the work of photographers such as Beverly Goodway, Steve Colby and Byron Newman has been familiar to me exploring the beauty of female form, and more latterly fashion photographers such as Tim Walker introducing me to the conceptually absurd. So without formal training, and the freedoms from expense and organisation needed to book live models (which would probably as a hobby rather than a profession give rise to anxiety on the part of my wife) posable mannequins have brought fun and an outlet for experiment and creativity which otherwise could never have been explored and enjoyed.

Further to this (paragraphs from http://www.hammer-film-locations.co.uk/cannes-2009.php) the barriers between people, which are often artificial, have to be broken down for creativity to be possible. It is the concept of interface that fascinates me and, I believe, is the heart of our consciousness.

As we traverse the seashore, it is those interfaces of states of matter, solid and liquid, where we find interest, and life. Rock and sand, sand and water, sea and sky: the horizon is our worldline. If we live merely suspended in space, in air, or at float in the sea without sight of land, we have no direction, space is a vacuum and unlimited sand is a desert. But when two states of matter meet, our fascination is, for instance, to see how the waves of water interact with the sand.

Dolls are such an interface, a breach between real and imaginary, a breach of the prejudice seen against posable mannequins which can also so wonderfully pacify mans' desire for aspects of feminity beyond his reality of life, thereby breaching a commonly tawdry perception of ***dolls, an interface between the living and the unliving and a challenge to those who are alive but dead that if a doll which is dead but which can be brought to life can live, so can they. It is often those who denigrate dolls that are really rather dead to life and with photos and stories, we can make a difference.

In bringing a doll to life we have to think of what the doll wants to do, as a separate, other person. In manipulating her joints too, we have to think about how she is made and wants to move rather than how we want to move her. Even in *** with a ***doll we don't have her brain or muscles to help us and we have to think for her to move her for us to move her.

So dolls help us to think of others, to empathise, and in this dolldom has a value for society, and in that spirit, photographing dolls that come to live doing ordinary living things is a joy . . .

- haremlover