HUMANS

CW: The linked gallery directs to a feed of mannequin images scraped from Craigslist sales. There are potentially upsetting interpretations of these images given the treatment of their subjects when considered as surrogates for the human form. Most images are low-resolution, and the most overtly violent are not included in this gallery. It is also potentially unpleasant to look through this series if you are in a dissociative state.

HUMANS is a series of found images inspired by Eric Oglander’s Craigslist Mirrors. I started this series while living in China. I had a poor grasp of the language, knew no one, and started to feel alienated from myself after leaving the defining context of my past four years. I probed this feeling by conducting regional image searches of all of craigslist via searchtempest.com. I felt an odd sense of comfort in this activity, knowing that these places continued to exist despite the geographical distance. Like Craigslist Mirrors, I wanted to find objects that would tell me something about a stranger in an intimate and unintentionally candid fashion based on their documentary choices. Swimming pools, stuffed animals, taxidermy, bikes, picture frames, house plants, and religious figurines were considered as autobiographical candidates. Ultimately, ‘mannequin’ searches yielded the kinds of pictures I was looking for. I think in some ways I was looking for people to connect with.

This project continues POOPY ISLAND’s strategy of ‘mistaking images for paintings or photographs’, and focuses on what happens when mannequins are photographed in personal or domestic settings. Do they take on their own individuality or expression? There’s something uncomfortable about how photographs of mannequins in mundane settings artificialize their environment, or gain authentic expression as humanoid subjects, representing their owners’ subjective desires. Attitudes about race, gender, age, and body shapes can be read into how some of these surrogates for people are clothed, damaged, or taken care of.