Mannequins

On the inhuman observers of our consumer lives

Earlier this week, Ewan Morrison tweeted about Lisette Model and how her mannequin photographs pre-empted those of Lee Friedlander by seventy years. My eyes lit up when I read this. Ever since I first picked up a camera, I have been fascinated by mannequins. Here is a curated selection of those photographs with some accompanying thoughts.

Mannequins exist in this weird peripheral zone where they are looked at but not really seen. They are the perfect subject for a photograph: you don’t need to ask permission, they keep still, and they embody the alienation of the society around them.

Mannequins often seem melancholy, trapped behind the glass. Their job is to reflect our desires and seduce us into buying things.

This mannequin of a child begs the question: how few features do you need to express emotion in the face? A tilt of the head, a button nose, and you have an appeal to engage and shop.

Pinocchio dreams of being a real boy. These mannequins lack everything that makes a child what it is. No unruly desires or willful demands, they are placid and vacant.

When I mentioned mannequins on Instagram, Marco Salotti, who lectures on photography and is an occasional wedding photographer, mentioned Bernard Faucon. I’d never heard of Faucon before but am impressed by his uncanny tableaus of child mannequins. The photo above is not that distant from a Faucon scene.

The desire to be perfect — porcelain skin, unblemished, contoured — is in every make-up tutorial and Instagram filter. Is this the perfection you want?

The age of the mannequin with personality is over. I went out this week to look at the state of mannequins and most of them were decapitated or had rudimentary heads. This is one of my first mannequin photos (c.2004) and is from a time when mannequins had more attitude.

Whilst researching a future article (honest!), I watched a 2017 Guardian documentary on sex robots. It was fascinating to see the dolls being made and their creators’ marketing of them to lonely, violent men. Mannequins remind us of how disconnected we are from each other.

I was vaguely aware that sex dolls are getting more realistic, but hadn’t researched further until recently. It is quite the experience. The descriptions have the uncanny poetry of a bad translation:

Each doll is manually sculptured by master, lifelike, endowed with soul. Extremely soft. Have the freedom to adjust the action of the doll, cooperate your need, authentic reality. The internal structure is completely carried on according to reality, with countless fold and a protuberance. There is a spikes of uterus in the tail. Arising from the mud draft made by the master with 40 years of experience engaged in the wax statue carving, so it is very realistic.

I have fallen out of the habit of meditating, but like to imagine mannequins engaged in meditation. Imagine if we turned self-mummifying Buddhist monks into mannequins. How amazing that would be.

This photo was taken a few years before the ABC burned down in a mysterious fire. I like to think the mannequin is fantasising about playing there one day. Indeed, his wig reminds me of Momus, the niche musician whose new album I have been enjoying this week.

As androids improve, the line between humanity and machine becomes less distinct. Maybe it will even dissolve entirely. The artist Chao-Ying Rao recently had a show where she sat with two sex dolls (she has been featured in the Daily Star talking about this) confronting us with our unconscious objectification. At the same exhibition, MV Brown took a different approach and became one with the machines through her metaverse singers.

In Klara and the Sun (2021), Kazuo Ishiguro imagines “artificial friends” providing company for lonely children. The android is programmed to only form a strong attachment with its owner, but Klara’s feelings of loneliness at neglect are all-too-human.