Today I am launching a new video series called My Friend the Artist in which I interview friends who are (you guessed it) artists. The videos will be posted to my YouTube channel and linked here and on Instagram, and will center around each artist’s work and process. My first subject is Amy Robison, who I count as one of my best friends, and who is also one of the most prolific artists I have ever met. Amy describes herself as “an ideas man,” and she ain’t wrong. Amy has more ideas than any other person I’ve ever met, and is constantly working on something. She’s also really good at verbalizing her thoughts—as a person who sometimes flounders and grasps for the right words to describe something in my head, I am envious of Amy’s ability to articulate her point of view. So she was an obvious first choice for the premiere episode of this project, and did not disappoint. Check out below.
Are We Having Fun Yet?
The day I took these photos, my dear friend Parker accompanied me to the beach for a sunrise daytrip. I was hoping to capture some surfers, but it was early in the season and the sea was flat. I’d brought along a few Barbie and Ken dolls, plus some beach accessories for them, to continue work on my series of Barbie portraits and editorial photography, and in the absence of waves, wound up spending most of my roll on those.
Parker went for a swim and traipsed along the beach as I set up, and on his way back to our blanket, watching me attempt to root a Barbie’s feet into the sand, asked, “Are you having fun?”
In that moment, I wasn’t exactly. Lying low in the sand, my bathing suit creeping up my ass, the rising sun bright against my face, trying to figure out the best angle to make this plastic doll appear real. I tried to explain to Parker that staging these shots felt like work to me, that I was creating a body of work, that I was trying to make something, that this was art, aware the whole time that my explanation felt a little ridiculous coming from a woman wriggling in the sand surrounded by a bunch of Barbie dolls.
Although I just got this roll of film processed (shout out to another pal Dilly), it was one of my earlier Barbie shoots from the beginning of the summer. As the project has continued to develop, I’ve thought a lot about the direction I’d like it to take, and also about how I feel when I’m making it. I’ve always bristled when people associate my creative pursuits with fun. I love the things I do, the photos I take, the words I write, but I don’t do them for fun, and I think I’ve always felt defensive around the use of that word.
But this project is fun.
It’s so fun, and I don’t think I really tapped into that until recently, after shooting half a dozen Barbie sets and seeing the images come back from the film lab, imagining what other scenarios I can place my plastic subjects in and make them feel alive. That’s the goal, I think, with each of these shoots—I want viewers to forget for a moment that they’re looking at a doll, and feel as though Barbie and Ken are real people, maybe in some way a version of who we imagined them to be when we play-acted adulthood with them as children.
Lately I’ve tabled at a handful of makers’ markets and zine fests, and brought a book of 4x6 Barbie prints sold for a dollar or two each. They’ve killed. I sell more Barbie prints at these things than anything else. And yes, Barbie is having a moment right now due to her blockbuster big screen debut, but the Barbie-mania exploded the way it did because millions of people out there love Barbie, and have been waiting for that explosion. Watching the faces of customers flipping through my Barbie album at markets, the manifestation of their childhood fantasies about Barbie’s real life brought to print, that is what makes this fun. Being able to connect my own lifelong obsession with others, tapping into our core memories of being children and imagining through our dolls what grownup life is really like, and seeing how I can make that life feel creative and magical and maybe a little funny and maybe a little racy.
And I get to play with my Barbies all the time. This month I have a print on a wall in an art gallery, a black and white portrait of Barbie reclining in only her underwear. I get to make art that resonates with people, and I get to have a good time doing it.
Parker.
The images in this post were shot on Seagull 100 film that expired in 1990. Aside from some very basic color correction during the scanning process and little exposure/contrast adjustment, these photos are not edited for effect. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.
Shots Fired
I started Thicket of Trash in late 2017, around the same time I was ending a toxic, abusive relationship. The project began as an exploration of self-portraits and collaborations with friends, taking photos of myself and of each other, using our faces and bodies and wardrobes as media to compose what we hoped were interesting images. It felt freeing to know that, alone in my apartment with a point-and-shoot digital camera and a tripod, I had everything I needed to make something beautiful.
The toxic ex referred to the work as “glamour shots.” He meant for the term to be diminishing, a way to trivialize what I was doing. By the time he said this, I had already broken up with him, and his words held less power than they had in the past. I love glamour. I’m usually hoping to capture some element of it when I photograph myself, and while I know that he didn’t mean to say my photos were glamorous, but rather to compare them to the studio portraits popular in the eighties and nineties in which women (and sometimes men) would get all dolled up and have their picture taken for the sake of vanity, it buoyed me to know he was threatened enough by something in them to try to make them smaller.
I go through phases of self-portaiture. Some years I photograph myself a lot; some years I concentrate the lens outward. I focus heavily on analog photography (film) in all my work, but there is something refreshing in the quick digital home session, an impromptu urge to swipe on some lipstick and get in my bathtub, fire off a handful of frames, see what comes out. I took these photos last night in my tub, and was reminded of my ex’s comment as I sat on my couch editing them. They are glamour shots, and thank you.
All images shot on Sony 6100 and edited with VSCO. Thanks for reading, you’re beautiful.