looking at participants from Review Santa Fe

I met Rebecca Martinez at Fotofest last year and it was nice to see her again at Review Santa Fe. She has several “bodies” of interesting work. I am espcially drawn to a series titled preTenders, about prenatal dolls that pass erily as real. She has a fantastic and twisted take on the doll, with help from actress Carrie Fisher. As one viewer told her “I find your work completely disturbing, and I LOVE it” (a few images are below, most have not been published).

Tonight, Rebecca has another project that will open in an exhibition at the Robert Tat Gallery in San Francisco and runs through August 22nd. Her series, Wounded, is being featured as Beauty Challenged at the Tat Gallery, and deals with objects that were once idealized representations of youthful perfection, and along with everything else in the world, have faced the ravages of time. “Perfect beauty in all things living and inanimate is revered by our society. Once that beauty ages and is damaged, its embodiment becomes devalued and often is discarded.”

“Martinez relates an interesting story about the creation of the series: Looking for mannequins to photograph, she went hunting on eBay, where she repeatedly lost out to the same eager bidder. Finally, she contacted the winning bidder and discovered it was the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City, purchasing for their vintage mannequin collection. Martinez contacted them and explained her project, hoping to convince them to let her borrow mannequins to be photographed. When David Hoey, Bergdorf’s Senior Director of Visual Merchandising, saw Martinez’s photographs he was so impressed that they forged a working relationship and now an exhibition in Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue store gallery is being planned.”

Images from Wounded

Images from preTenders