Lizard City Photography, After Dark Barbie, Erotica

After Dark Barbie, Exhibition, erotica (accompaniment)

Artist Statement

Barbie isn’t a poor substitute for a live, life size model. Isn’t erotic photography enabling a fantasy anyway? The live model also poses in one dimension and nude photographs can become just pornography. Perspective is everything. Barbie is handled, stripped, posed, dressed and stripped again. The act though provocative isn’t demeaning, exploitive, or violent. In a fantasy life Barbie can be real, and there is intimacy. There is no truth except what you imagine. Shadow, light and fixture seem real.

Barbie turned 40 years old in 2000.

The play unfolds

Ah, the beautiful Barbie, dream girl, Icon and doll. In our daydreams we see her, sitting on shelves and we wonder. The girl next door, the secret crush, those eyes and that smile. You play your games, we watch and fantasize. Innocence and erotica, the choices are there.

Barbie Doll

Her eyes

That smile

Flash of flesh to tease

Sex appeal and breathtaking ***

That innocent look

The Erotica

In Miss November

Up close and in the dark

The Answer

The players

One in repose

And then in Profile

Imagination

And the Embrace

Barbie sings the melody

The "After Dark Barbie, erotica" series was produced for an advanced photo class, darkroom exercise, with Bruce Bleckert, Custom Photo Service, Inc., Tacoma 1997.

Prints from this series were on display from November 3rd through December 28th, 2000 at the Random Modern Art Gallery, Tacoma WA in their show titled "Images of the Millennium".

*** Best in Show, Photography, "Goddess, Vamp & Vixen", Brick and Mortar Gallery, Tacoma, WA, June 20-July 17, 2002.

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