Ball Jointed Dolls

I’ve a bit of a conundrum when it comes to photography and it’s not something that is related to kit or anything like that.

I’ve been wanting to get back into photography after about a 10 year break, I joined up to my local Photographic Society and every week I come away from it both inspired, but terrified (intimidated) it’s a bit of a conflicting feeling – I want to get into it all, wrap myself in it and really enjoy myself.

But, I feel that my confidence has taken a huge knock and I am not as outgoing as I used to be. I feel like I don’t know where I can go or even where to start anymore; I had a brief stint of taking photographs of Warhammer models, which was fun and pretty interesting, but at the same time I feel a bit… jaded to it.

What I would love to do is find run down warehouses and broken things and photograph them. I once got into an abandoned old folks home with a pair of dolls and had fun photographing them amongst all the cobwebs and ‘gross’

Actually, my dolls are something that I have thought about a fair bit since starting going to the Photography Society and I regret selling them – such is the way of things – and I’d really like to replace some of them, not for anything as pretty as the one I had, just a plain, resin doll would be interesting to take around with me and photograph all ‘creepily’

Drawing on the wonderful and creepy inspiration of Hans Belmer and Joel Peter Witkin; two photographers I discovered while studying Photography at University.

It’s something that I will certainly hold onto and keep in mind, but there is still that underlaying concern for my lack of confidence – where does it come from? Is it because I have had so many people ‘cancel’ on me. Leaving me with an overwhelming feeling of abandonment and that I am not really worth being around; which has made it more difficult to reach out to people who might be interested in photographic pursuits. Some of my fondest memories of photography are in a small bedroom with a hastily thrown together ‘studio.’

I just like the idea of being able to pick up this side-passion again and get myself a doll to explore the local market with (when it is closed) and take creepy photographs again.