My images of mannequins challenge how we perceive them in our everyday casual encounters with window displays. They emphasise the underlying sensuality of these ideally formed yet, lifeless faces and bodies and portray them as aliases of living people, briefly frozen for the photographic pose. They hint at and contrast with the inhumane postures and looks that more often than not are imposed on real-life models by the lifestyles of fashion.

I wanted the images to communicate senses of entrapment, detachment and confusion so I used colour infrared transparency film for its specific, rich rendering qualities and applied alternate palettes of high contrast bright colours in some images against low contrast, dark colours in others. Shooting angles, composition and in camera cropping were chosen carefully to emphasise body and facial contours, expressions and details. Shadows, window lights and reflections on the glass panes were closely controlled to assist the desired compositions. Specific on-lens filtering created pre-visualised renderings that enabled me to use colour as an element of composition to achieve the desired atmospheric ambience.

I arranged the images in groups, each built around a theme or story. These formed the concept on which my Book “Dolls & Idols” was designed.