There is something about undressed, outdated mannequins than renders them automatically unsettling. It's not quite the same feeling as seeing someone undressed you shouldn't be (and we all know I'm not that much of a prude). Rather, it's the unnerving sentiment of witnessing an object rendered obsolete. Naked, a mannequin is stripped of its intented purpose – a plastic object whose sole purpose it is to mimic the human body, created for consumers.
Abandoned, unused, immobile – they also happen to make for fabulous photography subjects.
Don't these two next photos, by John Vachon and WeeGee respectively, look as though they could be the same mannequins?
Some of the more talented photographers took an interesting spin on the idea that mannequins were designed to be looked at. Designed to stand still, in glass in storefronts, to elicit curiosity, excitement, and desire – hopefully, the desire to be wearing the clothes they were modelling. But when these mannequins are in various states of undress, or better yet missing limbs and wigs, the visual impact packs an even bigger punch.
As I researched some of these photographs, spanning fifty years and several countries, I wondered why mannequins are such a compelling subject. There is just so much to explore in the idea that an object, designed to mimic the human body, serving consumers. There is also the simple fact that one of the main reasons mannequins have been a popular subject for photographers and artists is that they are motionless, and hold their poses effortlessly – as opposed to their living, breathing counterparts.
We could easily get into some of the more controversial elements – how mannequins present an idealized version of the human body, how female mannequins are often sexualized, how they have evolved over the years, etc. I could also join the crowds of feminists who have ripped into famous fashion photographers, namely Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, for the visual ways in which they objectified women, and often involved pairing live models with dopplegänger plastic mannequins.
There's also the curious fact that the word for model in French is, in fact, mannequin.
But really the main purpose me sharing these images with you is the fact that I find them beautiful and intriguing.
i've been thinking a lot about glasses these days; glasses as a fashion accessory, as a necessity, as a signifier of intelligence, desireability, gender or class. what do your glasses say about you? as someone who has worn glasses since two thirds of my life, how strange is it to hear people with perfect vision say they "wish" they needed glasses? how differently do i feel about wearing glasses now, as a young professional woman, than i did when i was a young girl? i've written about it before, but it shouldn't surprise me that i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about something i choose to wear every single day.
vision as represented in photography has really been ringing my bell these past few months. i recently rewatched two old favourites of mine this past week, man with a movie camera (1929) and la jetée (1965). thinking about the camera as almost a pair of glasses for the viewer, permitting the audience to see things in a clearer way – or even, to see things they would otherwise never be able to.
i've also kind of been completely besotted with surrealist photography, something i knew very little about before this summer thanks in part to a fantastic exhibition on at the musée national des beaux-arts du québec right now. to be honest i've never been too smitten with the surrealist movement more generally, but this exhibition has offered a different perspective… thinking about the possibilities the early days of accessible photography provided, combined with an incredible cocktail of creative uppity artists and feminists makes my heart beat just a bit faster.
a new pair of frames are in the mail, and i've got some other thoughts about glasses stores i'm slowly but surely processing. in the meantime, here is some eye-candy: literally.
Vertov, a Soviet film director, redefined the medium of still and motion-picture photography through the concept of kino-glaz (cine-eye), asserting that the recording proficiency of the camera lens made it superior to the human eye. In a double image in Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Man with a Movie Camera), the eye is superimposed on the camera lens to form an indivisible apparatus fit to view, process, and convey reality, all at once.
From Ken Russel's "Teddy Girls" series (1950s) thanks andi!
as always, click the photos for more details and links!
forgive me, this post will hardly be about feminism and/or fashion, but i really wanted to share this with everyone so… consider yourself forewarned!
i don't talk about my job very much here because… well, all of the usual internet-fearing reasons. as public as i tend to be with my private life online, negotiating career-related things online is a whole new ball game in the digital age. you know, that typical jargony disclaimer people use on twitter and facebook to say "these opinions are my own bla bla bla." today, i make an exception.
this morning, my short radio documentary on photobooths aired. you can listen to it online here. i had this idea back in january, finally got the nerve to pitch it to my producer in february, and slowly chipped away at it between other assignments and the daily grind. now, it's ready to share with the world! i'm still quite new to the medium of radio, but i really am starting to feel at home with all the creative ways we can share stories using sound. i'm also ridiculously lucky (and grateful) to have some fantastic co-workers who will let me bounce ideas off of them and help me adjust my skills to the medium of radio.
the reason i'm writing about this radio documentary online is that there are so many other stories i still want to share that i couldn't fit into that short piece, and there are also so many visual elements! where better to share those than right here?
for decades, we took photobooths for granted. cheap, high-quality instant photography is practical and useful, and will always be around, won't it? not so certain. this technology, which has been around for a century, is taking a beating now that digital photography has taken up a whole lot of space and taken away some of that "instant" magic. after the almost-death of polaroid film, combined with the introduction of digital booths, photobooth lovers have been given a swift kick in the pants.
what can we do to make sure they stick around?
in short: we use them.
before you can use one, though, you have to kow where they are. of course, i have my trusty stand-by photobooths i've used countless times over the years: the one i affectionately called "my" photobooth in the quinte mall, in belleville, ontario; the ones in the greyhound station in montreal and ottawa; and one tucked away in a corner of union station in toronto. but when i moved to quebec city, i noticed there wasn't one at the train station, or the malls i had been to. i had no idea where to find one. hello photobooth.net's locator feature! it's a great resource.
i looked for locations in the province of quebec… and lo and behold, all of them listed are in montreal. now, this doesn't mean there aren't any in québec city – it simply means they have not been documented and listed by someone for the website. one curious thing i did notice, though, was that for all of the montreal locations… the same face popped up again and again.
that face belongs to halifax-based artist meags fitzgerald. i contacted her when i started researching my story on photobooths back in january, wrongly assuming she was a montrealer and could give me a good quebec-focused angle here. instead, it turns out meags face shows up for most canadian cities you look up on the locator feature, because she is responsible for nearly 90% of all canadian locator contributions. yeah. i know. after a brief phone call, she quickly proved she knows more about photobooths than i thought humanly possible.
she uses photobooth strips and frames in all sorts of artistic projects, in ways i could have never imagined. and i suppose i should retract my earlier statement about this post having nothing to do with fashion… her garden state project clearly begs to differ. she makes her own clothes, and uses the same fabric to wallpaper the background of the photobooth she takes the photos in.
she's also currently working on an animation project: a stop motion animation shot entirely in a photobooth. it's kind of mind boggling to think of all the details involved in that process, and you can follow it on her blog. she's launching an indie go go campaign shortly as well if you want to help make these projects happen!
my own relationship to photobooths is similar to meags at first glance. i think we both probably started out as teenagers loving photobooth strips just for kicks, a cheap way to pass the time in the mall while waiting for our parents to come pick us up – without any inclination what we were making might one day be considered "art." where we differ, however, is that photobooths are hardly a big part of my life these days. i can count the number of strips i've taken in the last year on one hand, and the nearest one to me is in a part of town very unfriendly to my lack of ability/access to commandeer a motorized vehicle (the fanciest way possible of saying: i hate car culture). this makes no one sadder but myself. that said, i think this is a better opportunity than ever to share some of my favourite photobooth strips.
my own more creative photobooth strips were hardly one of a kind originals, i.e. i blatantly ripped off the concepts that i had seen other people do online, shared with livejournal communities in the early 2000s. my most successful attempt, though, are these two taken in a month apart in 2006.
in this interview i did with karol orzechowski back in april 2009, i did start to reflect a bit on the question of photobooth strips as a form of self-portraits. while with a photobooth there is arguably no photographer (which is also part of my intrigue around jon rafman's 9-eyes project on google street view) the subject remains the one who chooses how to pose, how to frame – albeit with very strict limitations. meags work plays with that quite well by creating her own environments, and it's definitely a challenge i'd like to take on one day myself.
and how could i end this post without sharing some of my favourite photobooth strips with friends?
salima and julia in a photobooth on coney island, august 2009. sves & myself, february 2012 in montreal. me and amber (who uses an adorable black & white strip for her website banner) in montreal in may 2011. perhaps when andi comes to visit in the fall it will be a better excuse than any to go on a photobooth date?
here's to the photobooth strips of yesterday, and the ones to come.
i'd love to see yours: share them in the comments!
making good on my promises to you, dear reader, this month. it's november 1st, so that means i owe you an outfit post. one big honkin' outfit post. here are some of my favourite outfits from the month of october. fair warning – lots of photos ahead. click the photos for larger images. comment if you have any questions about specifics!
let's go in chronological order, shall we? october started with some dreary grey days… and then all of the sudden, a heat wave! just in time for a lovely visit to petawawa.