...not that I ever played with them in the past...

I'm lucky enough to have a studio at home. It's actually more a shed/garage, but I have some cheapish strobes set up and some home made backdrop stands and so forth. I am fortunate in that my wife has allowed me to actually 're-task' that area, as we certainly can't really afford to have a 4 x 4 metre area dedicated to this role, given how much junk we tend to accumulate. I'm sure she'd rather it was used for storage.

Anyway, it's where I take most of my photos. You might have noticed that my gallery isn't exactly overflowing with landscapes. And there aren't all that many portraits, either. Well, not of people.

Which brings us to dolls. My girls live in the 'studio.' It gets pretty cold out there, especially this time of year. But they don't complain. And they are so cooperative you would not believe it. For instance, one of them has been out there for weeks now, patiently holding the same pose, covered in fake blood, tubes sticking out of her neck, waiting for me to finish off this Frankenstein series I'm playing with. Try and get a real person to put up with that - let alone the decapitation.

I suppose what I'm trying to get in some of these shots is an element of surprise and contradiction: surprise that these aren't real women, and the contradiction of hard, unyielding plaster and fibreglass being used to create such sensuous forms. And somewhere in that mix is a question - can you exploit a dummy? It certainly can't sue you, and if someone wants to claim that somehow that the shots are exploitative, then, how? Am I exploiting the female form, perhaps, in a generic sense? If so, can one be offended in a generic sense, on behalf of someone else? Of course, the answer to that is 'yes,' but it doesn't neccessarily mean that it makes any sense.

I know I'm a little odd, but I think I've finally embraced that, which is kind of liberating.