The year was around 2005, and the World Wide Web was still an unregulated free-for-all.
Out of all the different ephemera of that time, from Meatspin to Leekspin, from Two Girls One Cup to One Man One Jar, Salad Fingers and Charlie the Unicorn, Lemonparty and Bluewaffle, 4chan and VampireFreaks - what remained imprinted upon my teenage mind was an advertisement for hyperrealistic love dolls - RealDoll, by Abyss Creations.
At the time, I was not thinking about Ovid's Pygmalion and his hatred for women and sex workers that led him to fall in love with a statue of his own creation. I was not thinking about Propoetides and Galatea in a never-ending circle of subject and object, flesh and stone. Instead, I was simply transfixed by the uncanny valley nature of the image staring back at me. And so the obsession began.
With special thanks to Sam and Mike at RealDoll
digital photographs
San Marcos, 2019
