Photography / Time Travel Tuesday

Ventriloquist Dummies’ Portraits: Strange, Yet Beautiful?

 Ventriloquist Dummies

Remem­ber Time Trav­el Tues­days? When I’d find old gems to share on this blog?  I haven’t done it in a while, but recent­ly spot­ted por­traits of old ven­tril­o­quist dum­mies on Junk Cul­ture. They are apart of the book  Talk­ing Heads: The Vent Haven Por­traits by Matthew Rol­ston. He has built his career enter­tain­ment pho­tog­ra­phy. Not just enter­tain­ment, but enter­tain­ment. Think Tay­lor Swift, Michael Jack­son, Lady Gaga, and more.

As you can imag­ine, being in that indus­try means a lot of your work is micro­man­aged. Matthew need­ed anoth­er cre­ative out­let. When he saw a NY Times arti­cle on the Vent Haven Muse­um’s col­lec­tion of ven­tril­o­quist dolls, he felt a con­nec­tion to them.

If you hate the uncan­ny val­ley, you prob­a­bly won’t like these dum­mies. But, I think they are amaz­ing. I’ve nev­er real­ly exam­ined them up close, but Matthew’s por­traits are clear as day. You can see all of the details and con­struc­tion. The sur­face design is often gar­ish, a styl­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a human. They pro­vide a look into his­to­ry, when the art of ven­tril­o­quism was pop­u­lar.  (h/t Junk Cul­ture and Slate)

Ventriloquist Dummies dummy_guthrieboyVentriloquist Dummiesdummy_artanteakdummy_marletteheaddummy_anonymagirl dummy_ayregirl_junior