More Doll House Photos

thanks for posting your project, and I liked reading the info about Blur/books/platform software, as I am looking at doing something like this later this year..
The doll shots are definitely disturbing, enhanced by the greater contrast in some images, but I imagine thats what you were "shooting" for.......I just listening to "This American Life" today on Sat Feb 13th, 2010 with Ira Glass: he did a fascinating story on a similar subject: a guy who grew up investigating the left-behind objects in an abandoned house over the course of several years.........It fascinating how we can try to piece back together the lives of strangers from abandoned premises via different types of media: written/audio/photo. A journey where the principal investigator/photographer gets to say when to call it quits, and decide on their results at a certain point and time. When does it end? What is the perspective? How realistic is the picture which has been painted/suggested? What are the dynamics b/w the investigator and the scenario?
Chris, I'd like to hear more from your perspective on RFF: or did I miss another RFF thread with that content?
 
fotomeow said:
thanks for posting your project, and I liked reading the info about Blur/books/platform software, as I am looking at doing something like this later this year..
The doll shots are definitely disturbing, enhanced by the greater contrast in some images, but I imagine thats what you were "shooting" for.......I just listening to "This American Life" today on Sat Feb 13th, 2010 with Ira Glass: he did a fascinating story on a similar subject: a guy who grew up investigating the left-behind objects in an abandoned house over the course of several years.........It fascinating how we can try to piece back together the lives of strangers from abandoned premises via different types of media: written/audio/photo. A journey where the principal investigator/photographer gets to say when to call it quits, and decide on their results at a certain point and time. When does it end? What is the perspective? How realistic is the picture which has been painted/suggested? What are the dynamics b/w the investigator and the scenario?
Chris, I'd like to hear more from your perspective on RFF: or did I miss another RFF thread with that content?
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Thanks for the heads up on This American Life. I haven't listened to NPR in a long time; I used to listen in my car and the radio died a few yrs ago. I don't own another radio (I'm strange, I don't have much interest in popular culture and do not have a TV either...just thousands of books). I'll look on NPRs website to hear that story, it sounds interesting.

About your question, did you want to know about when to stop a documentary project in general or specifically the doll house project? I've talked about my thinking about art and creating a lot on RFF but spread over lots of threads over many years....so I'd be glad to talk about it more here....tomorrow. Its 4:30am and I cannot believe I am awake! Sleep is so overrated 😛 LOL!
 
I was trying to make a point that the investigator has the freedom to pose images in an attempt to draw certain conclusions, or that the conclusions are only drawn after looking at the series of photos (eg, looking at the contact sheets vs the images the fotographer ultimately selects to present); I was also trying to say, though not clearly, that the investigator ( in general, for any project) ultimately decides when to stop the project, whether they feel that they have found the images that portray what they want to portray or that they feel that there are no more images to shoot or no more investigating to be done.....

....So, yes, Chris, I am indirectly asking you when you think the project will be done? And what is the theme you find running thru your images? What is your relationship to the dolls? Of all the (44?) images you have taken of the project, could you choose 10-15 which you feel display your "vision" of this project?
If you would be willing to present 10-15 images with some monologue about the meanings of the fotos, I would love to see it!
 
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fotomeow said:
I was trying to make a point that the investigator has the freedom to pose images in an attempt to draw certain conclusions, or that the conclusions are only drawn after looking at the series of photos (eg, looking at the contact sheets vs the images the fotographer ultimately selects to present); I was also trying to say, though not clearly, that the investigator ( in general, for any project) ultimately decides when to stop the project, whether they feel that they have found the images that portray what they want to portray or that they feel that there are no more images to shoot or no more investigating to be done.....

....So, yes, Chris, I am indirectly asking you when you think the project will be done? And what is the theme you find running thru your images? What is your relationship to the dolls? Of all the (44?) images you have taken of the project, could you choose 10-15 which you feel display your "vision" of this project?
If you would be willing to present 10-15 images with some monologue about the meanings of the fotos, I would love to see it!
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In the Doll House, I am not an investigator so much as a storyteller. I found all of the dolls in that house, along with the books and other objects in the photos. I'll I have taken in were my cameras and films. I think someone may have added another doll or two though while I've worked on this. A couple weeks ago I discovered a Santa Claus Doll laying on the ground outside the house that I know had not been there before. It may have been in the house in the bags of trash though. Teens have been going in the house moving stuff and vandalizing it. I caught a young couple making out in the shed behind the house one day back in October when it was still warm outside where I live.

I don't know when I'll end the project. I suspect that soon the house will be torn down. There's a commercial real estate agent's for sale sign in the yard and the area around the house has rapidly urbanized in the last few years. The house is surrounded by new housing developments and some businesses are springing up too. In rural areas around here, an abandoned house can sit for decades, but as the city expands out to the house, the house doesn't stay long before someone demolishes it to build something new, or simply to eliminate a possible liability if someone would get hurt in it. If this happens, the project is done.

Someone abandoned this house several years ago leaving behind nothing but bags of garbage, some broken furniture (there's a dresser thats literally broken down to a pile of boards!), and the 9 dolls that I have found so far (Only 7 are on the website so far, the other 2 are recent finds and I haven't had time to scan the photos yet). I'm always curious why a house is totally abandoned instead of being sold to someone who will live in it, rent it out, or tear it down and build something else. THis one and its land are now for sale but it has been empty a long time before it went on the market. The dolls, to me, are evidence of a sad story in some family's life. What little girl would leave all her dolls, her childhood friends, behind to rot away? Something terrible must have happened. I'm not trying to find out or reconstruct what caused the dolls to be there, that would be impossible.

I'm looking at how the dolls have coped with their abandonment and being forgotten by the child(ren) who once played with them. Loneliness is a part of my life, the symptom of a deep scar on my soul. My family did not want me, some of my earliest memories are my mother telling me that she wished she had had an abortion, a sentiment that she repeated through all of my life. Only my grandparents cared if I lived or died, and they're dead now. I have never been able to form relationships with women. In my adult years I have asked out more than 200 girls, every one of which turned me down, many with quite shocking cruelty. The few women I have dated, like my son's mentally ill mother, asked me out. None of them, except my son's mother, dated me longer than a month. My son's mother admitted to me that she used me to have a kid because she figured I'd support the kid financially, she didn't want me at all. So, I no longer date anymore....I see couples together when my son and I go shopping or to restaurants, and I cannot help but think how foreign a concept it is to me that someone would be seen with me in public. I do have a small number of friends, most badly messed up for similar reasons. I expect one of them will kill himself within the next year because his life as it is is becoming a burden he is increasingly unable to bear. If I did not have my son, I would have done so long ago.

The dolls have found, in my story for them, friendship and family..love...even in bad times when things are bleak. I don't know if I can choose 10-15 images to represent them. They need to be seen as a whole. Keep in mind the story is still being told. I have 6 rolls of doll photos waiting to be scanned and three more scanned photos that I am editing in preparation for the website right now. I also have a number of other photos planned that I will make soon. If I had to represent the story with fewer than the whole, I'd choose this photograph:

dolls27.jpg

The Family Portrait.
 
Hi Chris,
You're amazingly open and honest about yourself, and your story is a bit confronting to read, but it also helps in understanding. I have an uncle, 12 years younger than my father, who was often told by my grandmother that she cried for weeks when she found she was pregnant (this was back about 1920) and that he was "a mistake". There must be many untold stories and scars amongst the members of RFF and it was brave of you to write as you have done. Sharing something like that can bring us back to real issues of humanity and make us realise that some of the obsessing we do over equipment is pretty irrelevant. Wishing you peace and grace and fulfilment in completing this project. It has just become a lot more poignant and full of meaning to me.
 
Leigh Youdale said:
Hi Chris,
You're amazingly open and honest about yourself, and your story is a bit confronting to read, but it also helps in understanding. I have an uncle, 12 years younger than my father, who was often told by my grandmother that she cried for weeks when she found she was pregnant (this was back about 1920) and that he was "a mistake". There must be many untold stories and scars amongst the members of RFF and it was brave of you to write as you have done. Sharing something like that can bring us back to real issues of humanity and make us realise that some of the obsessing we do over equipment is pretty irrelevant. Wishing you peace and grace and fulfilment in completing this project. It has just become a lot more poignant and full of meaning to me.
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Wow. I guess I can understand not wanting to have another kid 12 yrs after your older kid (your grandma must have been fairly old when she had your uncle) but to tell him she cried for weeks is awful....I totally understand how he must feel. My grandpa, the one I have pictures of on my website, used to tell his grandchildren that until he was 12 yrs old he though his name was SHUT UP, because that's all his dad ever said to him! Its amazing how nasty people can be to each other, and to family they're often the nastiest. The things I have seen in the families of friends and in my family are unbelievable. Man is wolf to man. That phrase is the title of a book by Dr. Januz Barduch, a polish Jew who ended up in Stalin's Gulag after the USSR took eastern Poland after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was signed.

My work is partly about history, which is a big interest of mine, but a lot is about how I feel and an attempt to understand people.
 
Putting that much emotion into your photographs and exposing yourself and your problems is gutsy stuff ... I salute you Chris.
 
Chris, good luck on this project. It'll be complete when you decide not to do any more. Then you'll have to assemble it. No small feat.

OT.. the book on P42/44 of your slide show... I had that as a kid... I may buy a lottery ticket because of this coincidence.
;D
 
jan normandale said:
Chris, good luck on this project. It'll be complete when you decide not to do any more. Then you'll have to assemble it. No small feat.

OT.. the book on P42/44 of your slide show... I had that as a kid... I may buy a lottery ticket because of this coincidence.
;D
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Wow, that's cool. I had a lot of the Little Golden Books when I was a kid, but I never had the Night Before Christmas. The amazing thing is they still sell that series of books. I bought a bunch of them for my son when he was little, a lot of the exact same titles that I read as a kid! A lot of them sold today are probably ones that were available when you were young too.
 
Congratulations to your project - even more so because you discovered that this is not just a speculative endeavour about someone else's life, but above all because it is a research into your own life.

Chriscrawfordphoto said:
... Loneliness is a part of my life, the symptom of a deep scar on my soul. My family did not want me, some of my earliest memories are my mother telling me that she wished she had had an abortion, a sentiment that she repeated through all of my life. Only my grandparents cared if I lived or died, and they're dead now. ...
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Reading this brought tears to my eyes. There are so many people who in some way or another were brought up to the idea of being worthless, of not being worthy of being loved - and who thus come to the conclusion to not love themselves (and I know what I'm talking about).

Life has its wonderful turns - the best of which are people or situations that help us to stop in our tracks and question old attitudes - this house may be a godsend for you, serving as a canvas for you to meditate about your fate.

I too have a son, and I have a marriage behind me that ended in private catastrophe. After my divorce in my darkest times, my son's simple existence motivated me to think about my life and what I could do so he would not fall victim to the same doubts and fears that I grew up with and that had limited my own biography.

This got me thinking about psychological structures in my family that were handed down over generations, producing fathers, mothers and children who were brought up to not be proud of themselves, and who unthinkingly passed this way of thinking on to their children. The bible is even speaking of seven generations, until psychological damage will dissipate in a family ...

You can break this chain for your son, at the same time maybe even changing the way you look upon your own life.

You will never know what happened in the doll house. But you do know what memories and feelings this house and its dolls (ghosts?) evoke in you. In making your photographs, you can follow your own memories and past decisions, and maybe even find the moments that were pivotal for your biography. Knowing them might change your life, they certainly will help you in supporting your son to come to different conclusions for his life.

This house and its dolls may be the figures which you can use to re-stage the chess game of your life. Work to maximize the intensity of your pictures - and I am already very impressed by their emotional content - and you might just find way to break your own spell (and that of your son's life as well).

Incidentally, you will produce art in its most noble form as a by-product.
 
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Wow, Chris. I don't know what to say here. I'm very seldom lost for words, but in catching up with this thread, this morning in a "wait" phase of a hurry-up-and-wait project, it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks!

I've always tried to use photography to convey my feelings, but I know that it many cases, it hasn't worked.

I've also said that I've found the doll images to be disturbing, but I just figured that it was because way back when I was young, we thought of dolls as being real, and valued them with a certain degree of personhood.

And then this morning >>>>SMACK!<<<<, your feelings came through loud and clear! Almost to the point of overwhelming me, actually.

This has been sitting on my screen now for the better part of two hours. I hope I'm making sense here ...

Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I'm looking at how the dolls have coped with their abandonment and being forgotten by the child(ren) who once played with them. Loneliness is a part of my life,
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And the feeling of loneliness is very well expressed in these photos! I've seen very few photos in my life which convey a feeling more effectively!

My family did not want me, ...
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You've really opened up here, Chris. I don't know what to say. Those who had a loving family often took it for granted, and I know I'm guilty of this at times. We focused on petty shortcomings. 🙁

every one of which turned me down, many with quite shocking cruelty.
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I'm going to speak (type) very freely here, Chris, maybe give you some perspective from the other side of the fence, so to speak ...

On one hand, turning down a date is one of the most awkward, difficult, and downright uncomfortable things there is! 🙁 There is never a win-win when this is done! 🙁

On the other hand, yes, some women can be very insensitive, and out and out cruel! This is uncalled for, but I admit that it happens frequently and I admit that in my younger years I did abide by the "a bad pick-up line deserves a bad brush-off line" rule. 🙁 I don't think I was ever unnecessarily nasty, but some may disagree ...

One thing I can say with certainty is that if you ever get a nasty turn-down, she was not right for you! QED! You can do much better!

I expect one of them will kill himself within the next year because his life as it is is becoming a burden he is increasingly unable to bear.
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Please do all you can to prevent this! At least suggest (insist) counseling, as everyone's life should be valued and enjoyed! There's nothing wrong with seeing a counselor, I've done it myself at times. Please help him take care of his mental health. He needs the support of friends like you!

If I did not have my son, I would have done so long ago.
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And please never ever fail to tell your son that you love him, and do all you can to make his life the best it can be! Every child needs to be wanted and loved! This helps to make a well-adjusted adult, and can actually help to un-do some of what happened to you.

The dolls have found, in my story for them, friendship and family..love...even in bad times when things are bleak. I don't know if I can choose 10-15 images to represent them. They need to be seen as a whole.
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I'm going to make two suggestions to you.

First, and this may have been suggested already, publish your work. "The Doll House" Self-publishing is very easy these days. Include your thoughts and feelings, as you've expressed them here. It would be an incredibly powerful work! Please do it!

Second, have you considered "adopting" some or all of the dolls? Take them in. Give them a bath, do their laundry, and perhaps donate them to a charity or shelter. Let some kids of this generation bond with them and care for them. Let them have the life they certainly don't know!

Just some thoughts ...
 
DMR,

I'm working hard to be sure my son has a life that is worth living. The stuff I told you is actually fairly common where I live. No one here cares about anything except money and appearances.

I may put together a book once the story is completed. I want to put it together as a single volume if I do it. I have pondered what to do with the dolls. They're not savable, they're full of mold and insects and are really unsafe to play with. I expect that this will end when I drive out there some day and find the house gone, a bulldozer sitting where it once stood. This has happened to so many of the abandoned homes that I have been to over the years. This photo below was done at a house that I knew would be torn down soon, as a bulldozer was parked in front of it when I drove past on a saturday. I photographed the outside of the house on Saturday and ran out of film before I went inside. The inside was so cool that I returned the next day (sunday) and photographed inside. This was in the attic!

dress.jpg


The day after, Monday, there was just a gaping hole in the ground. The house was demolished and the materials hauled off early in the morning. Nothing was left of the house or the dress. I figure the dolls will end the same way. 🙁
 
I really like that shot of the dress with the light streaming thru and lighting/backlighting the dress, etc.........a good ending foto to a project, with the razing of the house. Again, that NPR story I wrote about earlier in very similar. It also reminds me of William Christenberry's work, shooting the same lots/buildings over and over during the course of years/decades and documenting how they change in accordance with the changing socioeconomics/culture of the area during a specific time period. Many of the buildings in the South that he shot have been razed only after several facade changes. Hence part of the importance of photography.........
 
chris, this thread, your work in it, your commentary and that of your friends here is rather remarkable and touching. I doubt that what I'm going to write here will make much difference relative to the pain you've been through, but remember that what your mother said, as hurtful as it must have been (and continues to be), was not really about you. it was about her. she had a problem (probably many) for which you were an easy scapegoat. it had nothing to do with you and you did nothing to earn or deserve the treatment you got from her. without having ever met you in person, I can say without reservation or doubt that you're a wonderful person, warm, thoughtful, generous, artistically-gifted and more. whatever wounds and scars you bear are sad, painful and inextricably tied to who you are. I hope the process of being a good father to your son releases you from some of the pain that grips you. the pain certainly informs and adds depth and feeling to your art. I hope your art also serves to unburden you of some of that pain. enjoy your son, as kids grow up awfully fast. hats off to you for your unvarnished honesty. you've got a lot of friends and fans out here.

the shot of the attic is amazing. I feel bad when buildings are torn down, but I feel worse when I don't document them first. I don't know if that's nostalgia, preservationism or something deeper, but I'm glad you captured this house on film before the proverbial wrecking ball got to it. in the end, although so much of what we see appears durable to us, it seems that entropy always wins in the end. maybe making pictures offers some resistance to that in our minds.

anyway, enough rambling from me. keep posting your wonderful work on the site, your website and blog. I also hope you'll keep posting your candid words here. (thanks, btw, for those printer profiles. let's see if I can figure out how make them work.)
 
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