Window Mannequins | Mark Lindsay
Window Mannequins | Mark Lindsay
Window mannequins have always seemed creepy to me. Actually, all mannequins give me the willies—but the ones in windows are especially scary. They stare back at me with that frozen smile and those cold, cold eyes. It’s as if they all share some secret, mannequin-world joke that they’d never reveal to flesh-and-blood humans. I don’t know why shop owners resort to using them. Who wants customers coming into stores shivering with goosebumps?
I especially don’t like a bunch of heads in a window. Full-figured mannequins might be considered to be graceful in their effeminate poses, but those smiling heads, all lined up in a row, just seem wrong. What head would smile after its been detached from its body? It makes no sense.
Having made this proclamation I must admit my fascination with photographing shop windows, especially those with mannequins in them. Perhaps its in deference to Eugène Atget or that I’m simply drawn to the macabre. Maybe I long to be a smiling idiot in a window. I just don’t know. But, photograph them I must.
And, as Atget would probably agree, my mannequins look best in black & white.