Untitled

All comments appreciated.

~Good lightning

Light, textures colors with composition are great.

Dantes first room for dolls, Virgilios sister will guide you.

My old "Heman" doll will freak out!

Masterful!!!

Good idea

Great!

So sensitively executed that any viewer could easily believe this little doll to have a 'real' personality. All the emphasis is on those Betty Boop eyes and the lighting creates a strong sense of mood. The doll itself, surely had an owner [or owners] who cherished her. Now she is alone, and the arm behind her, as well as the one hanging on a thread, invokes feelings of rejection and neglect. Nice work Bob.

Makes me feel so..... sad. Certainly evokes emotion. Very creative composition.

Great composition. Eyes seems to look back at the losed arm... Croping and lighting IMHO are perfect. Congrats

Perhaps its just my rather depressed mood, but this one really hits home. I find the whole image very sad, like something very important from the past that has been lost forever. I have the reaction to this that I did when I saw our pal Doug's image of the abandonned baby carriage. It evokes the constant struggle of memory and loss. Its brilliant image, Bob. One of your best.

I agree with Andy. This is pretty grim. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Thematically, this belongs with the twisted fork. Nice color. I like the deviation from the still life and floral.

I think I would have shot this without the spare arm in the background, which is why, Bob, you are better at this stuff than I will ever be. I also would have placed the highlight on the broken arm dangling from the shoulder, rather than the dolls face, but here again I offer this as evidence of your superior aesthetic.

 

I appreciate very much Andy's comments on how his image relates to memory and loss.

Superior aesthetic? No, just different. I can easily see a beautiful black and white print of this doll sitting in a Burgess frame. She is delicately lit by window light, with the dismembered arm placed in a more natural position or eliminated entirely. The outcome would be less grim, as John so rightly described my shot, but probably evoke the feeling of memory and loss even better.

This is twisted ........................... therefore - I love it ................... !!!

I had to uprate on the grounds that I have now revisited at least 6 times to view this magnetising and enigmatic picture :)

Yes, fabulously lit and richly coloured. An enjoyably new kind of subject. I particularly like the staging and the mindgames the staging encourages. The doll, a replica Hollywood beauty from the 20s or 30s and today a senior citizen stands in the glare of the spotlight apparently unashamed of her nakedness and broken body. How peculiar. Her body language hints at an intended exit right. Yet she has her back turned to her missing arm. Her own missing arm. Does she really intend to leave it there? Does she even know its there? Yes there is much of memories and loss here. And memory loss.

Hmm. I have to confess I don't find this image emotionally involving, but then I often have that problem with studio shots. I find it interesting, because the lighting engenders an almost life-like quality to the doll, focusing on those arresting eyes. Perhaps a dolls house or some of its contents in the background would help me sustain this charming illusion, but I'm made acutely conscious that this is a studio table top. The dismembered arm has obviously been carefully positioned, and I'm made to suspect you might have yanked her other arm out of its socket just for effect. A broken doll lying in the wreckage of a genuine bomb blast is powerfully poignant, and sadly we've seen such images. Emotional depth may not have been an intention here, even though some viewers have been moved. But personally, I'd like to see this doll in a more life-like environment in order to care about the 'life' she may have had, perhaps with some vestige of those who've loved her. Regards.

Hi Trevor, it sounds like you would liked to have seen an image that pulls at the heartstrings a bit more. That's fine, I enjoy those types of images myself, but that wasn't really my intention. Of course I'm happy that people saw it their own way, and felt however they felt. I expected people to find this image odd, or even twisted as Ken so rightly put it, because I see it that way myself at times. And I wasn't surprised by the more emotional interpretations, although that wasn't a specific goal.

 

I found this doll in an antique shop with both arms hanging by strings. I didn't yank her arms out, what kind of monster do you think I am? :-) For a while I toyed with the idea of a more sentimental image. A little doll on the back of a shelf, or on the floor of a closet broken and forgotten. As I was mulling this over I came to realize that the images I was seeing in my minds eye were too predictable. It was as if they were the images I was supposed to do with a broken little doll. So I decided to change course.

 

Instead I chose to view her as a living being who's been down a few bumpy roads in life, but I wanted to keep it simple. It's approached essentially as a portrait, and while I did snip the string holding the severed arm and placed it into position, I wanted the focus to remain on her expression. I guess the success of the image rides on that expression, and the technical decisions I made in presenting it. Her expression doesn't give us specifics about her life, but few portraits do.

 

If I were to put into words what I was trying to achieve I guess it would be as follows. Even with one arm completely detached, and the other hanging by a thread she still looks at us with a expression of calm on her face, and possibly a trace of wisdom in her eyes. This little thing "has been there and done that" as they say, and she's still as sweet as ever!

 

I know, that's all crazy talk. :-)

 

Thanks Trevor.

What strikes me more than one or two lost arms is the doll itself: It's the combination of the doll's body and this Lolita-like rouged face. I don't have any sentimental feelings looking at it as I don't perceive this doll as a childs' toy. There is something strangely erotic about her look don't you think? Maybe it shows how men in the 1920ies (and only then?!) wanted women to appear: as cute little dolls.