CATCH LIGHT

For a time, I spent a lot of time in wax museums. As evidenced by my forensic reconstructions project, Unspeaking Likeness, I’m fascinated by replications and these museums are a bonanza of such creatures.

When taking photos in situ of everyone from Taylor Swift to Einstein I discovered an unexpected phenomena – though lifelike, when inspected closely the most glaring indicator of their falseness was the deadness of their eyes. Made of glass they looked uncannily real, but were just as eerily not. In the resultant photographs the only organic, “real” thing about them was the light reflections on the glass orbs, the “catchlight” in photographer’s language.

I wanted to highlight this effect so went back and re-photographed the wax figures with a black velvet backdrop and light-metered only for the small, white reflection in the eyes. I printed them as dark as possible while still retaining the semblance of a figure.

When a viewer walks into a room of these photos I want them to only see black rectangles at first and then, as their eyes adjust, see the outlines of a face. These photos are very much about time – time to recognize the subject and how the inclusion of certain people speaks to time measured by celebrity. According to a museum employee I spoke to about the turn-over of the figures: “Lincoln lasts an eternity while Miley Cyrus, for example, will be discarded when her “celebrity time” has waned.