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.
