Photograph or Moving Image by ForeignPhotographer/Artist
Inventory Number
93-PHF-007
A doll with two "lower bodies," one pointing up and the other down, stands in front of a closed door. The groin of the upper body is located around the keyhole of the door. A dark wall dominates the right of the picture and a woman’s sandal hangs on it in the foreground, as if peeking gingerly at the doll. The impetus for Hans Bellmer’s making and photographing young female dolls was threefold. First, he had been attracted as a young man to his 15-year-old cousin. Second, he saw the Jacques Offenbach opera The Tales of Hoffmann and was fascinated by the story of a man who falls in love with an automaton. And third, it is known that at around this time his mother sent him a set of toys that brought back the world of his childhood. In response to the rise of Nazism, he made a sacred resolution to do nothing that would support the state and instead he would explore his eros for a girl through artistic media.
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)
A doll with two "lower bodies," one pointing up and the other down, stands in front of a closed door. The groin of the upper body is located around the keyhole of the door. A dark wall dominates the right of the picture and a woman’s sandal hangs on it in the foreground, as if peeking gingerly at the doll. The impetus for Hans Bellmer’s making and photographing young female dolls was threefold. First, he had been attracted as a young man to his 15-year-old cousin. Second, he saw the Jacques Offenbach opera The Tales of Hoffmann and was fascinated by the story of a man who falls in love with an automaton. And third, it is known that at around this time his mother sent him a set of toys that brought back the world of his childhood. In response to the rise of Nazism, he made a sacred resolution to do nothing that would support the state and instead he would explore his eros for a girl through artistic media.
(NAKAMURA Naoaki)