ADVENTURES OF CLIVE

I bought Clive from a lady in Fife to use as a prop for a Bladerunner themed portrait for college many moons ago (2013!). As she’d named him, I’ve never been able to let him go so he’s followed me from Leith to Portobello and back again, living in various flats and studios.

I’ve always loved the street photography of Eugene Atget, the scenes of mannequins in 1920s Parisian shop windows and the surrealists’ use of them in scenes and performance. And Sarah Lucas’s cheeky bottom half male mannequin’s with cigarettes. I also find the idea of phrenology heads fascinating and quite surreal too.

So here’s Clive and friends, 2013- now but most images from 2017 onwards. Most of these images featured on an old now deleted instagram page I had from 2016-2020.

East Neuk, 2018.

Multiple exposure medium format frames and phone snaps.

Pouring over photography books, mannequins are a fairly common feature for many street photographers like Vivien Maier and in the work of Lee Friedlander, one of my favourite street photographers, perhaps also inspired by the atmosphere of early photography work of Atget …more inspiration can be found from this 2017 pinterest board for any other mannequin lovers out there.