Shoot Two: Party House

After starting on the mannequin concept and travelling to Seaford to pick up two eBay purchases, I found inspiration in the mass of body parts I had dumped on the stairs after bringing said purchase in from the car. The plastic body parts seemed to fit well in the worn-out student house they were in, and made for at the time, quite a surreal iPhone photo. This photo developed into a shoot of mannequins and parts around my derelict looking student house and made for some nice simple but quite eerie images. I particularly like the first two images in this series, with the retaken body parts image and the naked mannequin in front of the window, although not strictly a fashion image, I still like the evocative feel it gives.

After taking the initial photo I started to research into more gritty, surreal photography. I wanted these images to be a lot less glossy and nice and challenge your perceptions on what mannequins can sometimes represent. I first found Hans Belmer’s photographs of his doll ‘La Poupee’ and loved the way he had just left it as a naked form, no clothing to make it identifiable as anything particularly human. This was also echoed by Mert and Marcus who shot a similarly eerie model, but transferred their research into the form of fashion photography.