Gallery: Little Dolls von Alain Delorme

Artificiality, control and forced beauty – this is what Alain Delorme deals with in his impressive photography collection “Little Dolls”. Here, we find disturbingly perfect and beautiful looking little girls, in poses and make-up refering to the typical advertising and beauty contest aesthetics of today.

Delorme´s “Little Dolls” are bearing an alien-like inhuman, almost scary looking smile in their perfect faces. In each picture, we see a controlling hand coming from an unknown source which puts the chin into place, arranges the hair or even holds the girls down by gently but firmly laying on their shoulders – symbolising the over-ambitious mothers of young beauty- or advertising stars, or even society itself and its pressure on children and women to fit into certain artificial roles and characters which do not refer to their actual nature.

With his work, Delorme wants to point at the pressure for perfection and as a consequence the loss of innocence children are exposed to in nowaday´s society:

“This demand of perfection was initially built around the woman, then around the man, and now the child is the core subject. Altogether symbol of innocence, central in the family unit and advertising’s favourite target, the child has never been so protected and paradoxically so put forward as a commercial object. Nowadays, little girls want to look like their idols: Lorie, Priscilla, Britney Spears… The “Lolita phenomenon” keeps growing, really ingrained in our society. These baby women can be seen everywhere: on TV, in magazines, films, etc… My series “Little Dolls” questions this phenomenon.”

The idea for “Little Dolls” was raised by a real advertising campaign Delorme came across:

“This work has been inspired by a photography of a little girl, taken for an advertising campaign of the multinational company McDonald, an apostle of the standardisation of the way of life. This little blond head for magazines, as sterilized as the cake in front of her, was being offered a Barbie doll in the end of the shooting. This gave me the idea of hybridizing her face with the one of the toy. A body mutation operated by computer tools, in the same artistic line as Aziz and Cucher or Inez Van Lamswerde. Creative works where one plays with pixels as a scientist does with genes, to recreate the Man, the child here, at will.”

Delorme, born 1979, lives and works in Paris. He graduated from the Gobelins, l’école de l’image, Paris, followed by a Master of photography at Paris VIII University. His solo exhibitions include FTC Gallery, Berlin, Gallery Brandt, Amsterdam, Gallery 360°, Tokyo, and Cosmos gallery, Paris, France.

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Künstlichkeit, Kontrolle und erzwungene Schönheit – mit diesen Themen beschäftigt sich Alain Delorme in seiner erindrucksvollen Foto-Serie “Little Dolls”. Wir sehen hier verstörend perfekt und schön aussehende kleine Mädchen, in Posen und Make-Up, das typisch für die heutige Werbe- und Schönheitsbranchen-Ästhetik ist.

Delormes “Little Dolls” tragen ein außerirdisches übermenschliches, fast unheimliches Lächeln in ihren kleinen perfekten Gesichtern. In jedem Foto findet sich auch eine kontrollierende Hand einer sich außerhalb des Bildes befindenden, unbekannten Figur – die das Kinn gerade hält, das Haar arrangiert oder die Mädchen gar auf ihren Platz presst indem sie sanft aber bestimmt auf deren Schultern liegt. Sie steht für die überambitionierten Mütter all der kleinen Beauty-Queens oder Werbe-”Stars” und vielleicht auch für die Gesellschaft allgemein und deren Druck auf kleine Mädchen und Frauen bestimmten künstlichen Rollen und Charaktern zu entsprechen, die mit ihrer eigentlich Natur wenig gemeinsam haben.

Mit seiner Arbeit will Delorme auf den Perfektionszwang und den damit verbundenen Verlust der Unschuld und Unbefangenheit hinweisen, dem Kinder in der heutigen Gesellschaft ausgesetzt sind:

Die Idee für “Little Dolls” liegt in einer realen Werbekampagne, auf die Delorme gestoßen ist:

“This work has been inspired by a photography of a little girl, taken for an advertising campaign of the multinational company McDonald, an apostle of the standardization of the way of life. This little blond head for magazines, as sterilized as the cake in front of her, was being offered a Barbie doll in the end of the shooting. This gave me the idea of hybridizing her face with the one of the toy. A body mutation operated by computer tools, in the same artistic line as Aziz and Cucher or Inez Van Lamswerde. Creative works where one plays with pixels as a scientist does with genes, to recreate the Man, the child here, at will.”

Delorme, geboren 1979 ,lebt und arbeitet in Paris. Er besuchte die Gobelins,L’Ecole de l’Image in Paris und schloss anschließend sein Masterstudium in Fotografie an der Paris VIII Universität ab. Einzelausstellungen von ihm fanden unter anderem in der FTC Galerie, Berlin, der Galerie Brandt, Amsterdam, und der Galerie 360°, Tokio sowie in der Cosmos Galerie, Paris, statt.