Video: Sinister nostalgia: women and their dolls in the Vera Saltzman photo project
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Project by a Canadian photographer Vera Saltzman differs at the same time with dry research precision and piercing frankness. In the portraits of Vera Zaltsman, women in their forties appear side by side with their favorite children's dolls - the effect of these photographs, in her opinion, refers to the Freudian concept of "sinister".
The term, known as "uncanny valley", is well known to psychologists - it was scientifically given by the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, despite the fact that many literary masterpieces, such as "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley (1818), were based on similar motives. … The theory of "sinister" is based on the fact that something humanoid, but with a slight deviation from the norm (for example, a robot, cadaver, or zombie), causes inexplicable horror in an ordinary person.
According to Vera Zaltsman, children's dolls are capable of producing a similar effect. To achieve it, she “pulls out” toys from the familiar environment and gives them into the hands of mature owners. These photographs seem ominous, because, according to Salzman herself, they are distinguished by "mild abnormality" and "a sense of the nearness of death."
“Out of a sense of nostalgia, we often keep our children's toys,” says the photographer, “The women who took their dolls in their hands again could not even remember the last time they played with them. This strange experience reminded them that that we are sure of only one thing - in our past."
Vera Zaltsman's "scientific" view of a child's doll is unlike the approach of other contemporary artists: the sculptor's playful eroticism Marina Bychkova and the rough sensuality of the artist Jennifer Watson … The dolls in Salzman's photographs are sinister, but their owners still have tender feelings for them: this is a complex system of relationships that once again reminds us of the unbreakable connection between the mad Frankenstein and the monster he revived.
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