Press Button To Blog - Bugging The Barbie

Why did Barbie always carry bug spray with her? Because Ken kept telling her to "Margot Rob-bee" herself!

Sorry, I couldn't think of any jokes that would bridge the worlds between Barbie and photography.

Anyway. I frequently find myself visiting thrift stores in search of photo inspiration. Someone else's junk is another man's treasure and all that jazz. There's something about walking through the aisles of other peoples' forgotten treasures that sparks my creative juices. Someone somewhere either purchased or were given everything thats been donated to that store. Where did things come from, what was done with them, when were they made, what happened for these once loved or hated objects to find their way to such a pityful end? A landfill is the meloncholy conclusion to so many of these stories, each lost to time and ever fading memories in a society built on buying the new and disgarding the old.

Whew. Let's maybe take a sombre step back and remember that I'm writing about Barbie dolls that are worth maybe fifty cents of plastic and fabric, but often get sold for the prices of spices during the Crusades. Fond memories weren't on my mind during one such occasion to the thrift store when I stumbled upon a batch of cheap Barbie dolls that I had intended for utter annihilation. When Barbie is charging the cost of saffron to enjoy her playing pleasures, it's no wonder she'd eventually find her way to the torture rack.

Now I know that on paper (a psychologist's in particular), there's something slightly wrong about wanting to destroy something that had brought so much joy to children for decades. What sort of monster would take pleasure in desecrating the effigy of womanhood that's been held so dear by so many for decades? What else can I say to you that I haven't already told the judge and jury preciding over my case? That I'm completely innnocent, and something otherworldly drew me to these dolls in particular among the other toys purchased that I've also destined for destruction (future content alert!). I confess on record that I couldn't resist the urge to take them home and unleash my...let's call it creativity. I wanted to channel my inner Sid from Toy Story, to let slip my mental dogs of war on some unsuspecting toys.

As I sat with the dolls though, turning them over in my hands as images spun through my mind, I realized that I didn't want to outright ruin them until I had better concrete ideas. So in the short term I had to come up with something that would keep the integrity of my props, so that I didn't have to continue buying little girl's toys every few weeks. I'm a weirdo, but there's a line even for me, and that line is somewhere before spending more than $5 on a handful of dumb dolls.

Hoping for some inspiration, I then dug through my collection of photography props that I keep in an old briefcase that I've never used for any legitimate purpose (even when I worked in an actual office environment), before deciding on breaking out some preserved insects from a previous shoot that had literally fallen apart. Could there be a more logical counterpart to Barbie other than a dismembered beetle corpse? Methinks not, and more often than not methinks in a high capacity, so I'll take my opinion over any to the contrary.

As I began to set up the shoot, I didn't intend for the photos to come out as icky and creepy as they did. I only wanted moderately gross and a medium of harrowing in my recipe. But as a photographer, sometimes you can only shoot what's available, and what I have in copious amounts are things that would alienate the squeamish audience that I yet to actually have. I'm sure this'll help my viewer count go way up any day now.

The thing about photography is that it's a medium that allows you to create what you can imagine (within reason). My problem is I can imagine a lot of inane dumb-dumb things that probably shouldn't exist. With a little bit of creativity and an open mind, I can make an absolute chimera of idiocicy if you let me. I love the possibility of taking something as innocent as a Barbie doll and I can turn it into a dark and unsettling work of twisted "art".

Whether that's what I did is highly debatable and I won't go as far as to say that's what I've managed here. I don't particularly even like this shoot if I'm being perfectly honest with you my dear non existant reader. I just popped some plastic heads off of some toys to capitalize on my pre-decapitated bug. I'm not precisely the Picasso of the parasite world.

In a slightly related coincidental tangent, there's something named Sphaerocoris Annulus, which are green bugs that with exactly 11 spots that omit a noxious odor when threatened, a species otherwise known as the Picasso beetle. They're the literal Picasso's of the parasite world. But wait, you say being a semi-informed-pedantic-animal-lover, beetles aren't a parasite. But actually, beetles do occasionally have parasetic relationships. Certain species of beetle live in fur of other creatures like mice and beavers and slothes, feeding off of hair folicles and epidermal secretions. You get meals where you can get them when you're a bug. And there are even types like the blister beetle that nest in beehives by emitting pheramones as larvae, which in turn attract and attach themselves to the body of a male worker bee who then transmits the parasites to a female who takes the invading insects back to the hive where the larvae gorge themselves on the pollen/food that was meant for the actual babby bees. A) The more you know, huh? And Bee) that's my fucking regurgitated honey those beetles are eating, to hell with the baby bees, what have they done for anyone? Tell them to eat some Gerbers or something and leave the sweet stuff to me.

Though on another tangent related to Garbers and the demographic playing with Barbie, did you know that many baby food makers were being sued in the past few years because investigations have shown that most brands contained heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead, all of which are toxic to humans and linked to neurological problems in children. If you don't want your kid to starve, you feed your 1 year old strange shit like "Beef and Gravy", and when their brains begin to invert from it, you end up with booger eaters and crayon sniffers until they hit puberty and social pressure finally gets them to stop being inappropriate in public.

This is the content you're here for isn't. Rhetorical question of course.

Look. Like some of my others shoots, things didn't turn out how I imagined it in my head. I'm still an amatuer, what can I tell you. That's the pitfall of having a lack of a solid creative vision going into it. I went in picturing Barbie dressed for war with half her face melted off, a la the underrated film gem "Small Soldiers". Regardless of the lacklustre outcome, I can certainly say that there probably aren't any pictures that exist that are quite like what I created. And personally I actually highly value that uniqueness, that undefined quality of aiming to develop something truly original. Were the pictures I took objectively good? Probably not. Are my photos one of a kind? Actually yeah, probably. And fuck me if that doesn't count for something in my book of debauchery.

At the end of the day, my previous and future work may not be for everyone, and some may find it disturbing or unsettling or gross. But as a photographer, my goal isn't to please everyone – it's to express myself and create something that resonates with me. As long as its not fucking BORING, I'm pleased with whatever drips out of my schlong of artistry. So as I continue to explore the depths of my creativity (and depravity), I'll keep visiting those thrift stores, searching for inspiration in the unlikeliest of places. And who knows, maybe I'll stumble upon something even more unexpected than a batch of busted Barbie dolls to destroy.