More Action Figure Headshots
For me, these images are objective distillations of the meeting of fantasy and reality in contemporary experience, as manifest in children’s toys. The figures are playthings, ostensibly fictional, yet miniature incarnations of existing real world ideologies. The combination of mass production and realistic, detailed design in the dolls results in a contradiction of crudeness and refinement. These qualities, along with the manufacturer’s motive of profit, led me to consider the power these objects of socialization serve in our culture. I began shooting wrestlers, soldiers and representations of female identity formation as well. In terms of the male toys it is the energy of aggressive hypermasculinity that strikes me: startling embodiments of plastic testosterone—something of these characteristics must be absorbed by the boys who play with them. Visually, I want to convey their potency by centering, head shot-like on their faces and magnifying their 1” or 3/4” heads 30 or 40 times.