I have been super-inspired by Barbie lately.
Maybe it’s the impending feature film, or my mother going on Poshmark shopping sprees for Barbie clothes and sharing her finds with me (yes, apparently you can buy Barbie clothes on Poshmark). Whatever it it, I have ideas. In my last post, I used Barbie to explore the relationship between her plastic body and our fleshy human ones, and I like the idea of combining the doll with actual people in future shoots. However, most of my ideas center Barbie as the focus, using a macro lens and carefully chosen locations to imagine what her life could look like.
I photograph a lot of rodeos, so when my mother found a Winking Western Barbie and Ken online, I knew I had to attempt a Barbie rodeo. (I did wind up putting the cowgirl attire on a different Barbie, because the Winking Barbie’s face was damaged). Any new concept takes a few tries to work the kinks out—this may be Barbie’s first rodeo, but I don’t think it’ll be her last. While a thrifted plastic horse came in handy to transform Barbie into a barrel racer, it was the sideline romance of two other characters that became the main story for me. My friend Steven shook his head at me when he found out I used a roll of Lomochrome Purple for this shoot, a specialty film made by Lomography with purple color shifts, but the roll was given to me by another friend who wasn’t entirely sure if she’d shot anything on it, so I didn’t want to save it for anything too precious.
Turns out she had shot it, but just didn’t fully rewind the lead. In some of the below images, you’ll see double exposures that literally add another layer to this already otherworldly western moment.
Thanks for reading, you’re beautiful.