Barbie: Universal Icon

---

Barbie is culture itself, and not just contemporary culture. She’s arguably the present-day “human representative” that started from as far back as the Greeks, all-inclusive until now and continuing into the distance future. She is beauty. Human beauty in its idealized form. Like Michelangelo’s David is representative of our species beauty for both of the sexes, even though he’s male, Barbie is the same for us today. She is not everyone’s idea of beauty, especially when you account for the myriad differences of human beings across the globe and through time, but she is meant to be by its creators and many of her admirers, and despite the critics it’s successful to that measure.

Utilizing photography to represent the beauty of the human species goes hand-in-hand. Barbie challenges me in that endeavor. Can it be successful without being a collection of junk images portraying all the trite cultural stereotypes associated with her and me being a male? Certainly, I’ll be exploring all of that, but intentionally, not accidentally. However, ambiguity must be maintained in order to allow viewers, myself included, the freedom to let it become personal. Unlike other works of mine, I don’t want to steer anyone too heavily in a particular direction. A generalized nudge will suffice to impart a natural response, be it negative or positive.

When I ponder the possibilities of Barbie as subject, I’m limited only by the limitations of the doll itself, unless I digitally manipulate an image or paint her on my own terms. She’s a catalyst, a witness, and a representative of Western civilization. She’s the “every woman”. The bathing women of Degas’ pastels. The heroine from antiquity. The supermodel of Lindbergh’s heyday. A college girl in America or a fashionista in Paris. She’s the girl we imagine marrying one day. She’s the one that got away. She’s the young woman many used to be. She’s the powerful woman who lives life on her own terms. She’s sexual and sexless at the same time. In today’s world, she’s the embodiment of whatever she wants to be.

Her power is limited only by her being white, but she was made such and cannot be changed. However, she can still be representative of women of all colors, races and cultures, as long as you generalize her strengths, because they are inherent in all women. She is a stereotype that somehow transcends surface reading. She’s unmistakably American, but like David, universally relatable and idolized.

I’ve been mulling over a Barbie series for years now, especially amidst the Covid crisis. The lack of human contact made it a requirement to seek alternative subjects and hence a perfect time to begin. Although it’s important to note that the series les marionettes perdues, of which Barbie is a part of, wasn’t motivated by the lack of human contact during the pandemic. Fairytales and the mystery of toys and children’s “stuff” was writing itself in my mind for decades, an endless tale of living lost toys and dolls that needed expression and is finally in development.

The Wayward Sisters is a spinoff of that. It developed so rapidly into its own thing that it’s now an independent series. Barbie has a natural place in les marionettes perdues, but this series is not about Barbie personified the way it is in that series. This collection is about the icon itself, whether she’s personified or not.

Primarily shooting in black and white, I’m influenced by many of the masters, from Stieglitz, Cartier Bresson, Penn, Avedon, Corbijn, Lindbergh, Capa, McCullen and so on. Also, I endlessly study the genres where black and white was and is prevalent like pictorialism, fashion, documentary and the street. My mixed-media works have utilized charcoal as the main medium since the late ‘80s along with black and white photography in the process. Since the beginning my work has been the exploration of light and shadow, whites and blacks, undulating forms, textures and their cohesive relationships. 

This series is more than about Barbie. She’s the subject, yet at the same time, merely a convenient vessel to explore the inexplicable power of black and white imagery, cultural concepts, the practice of my photography and the “drawing of surfaces” that post-production allows me. There is no planned end date with other forms of media becoming a part of it over time. Currently in development.