Triggered: Susana Raab
The World's Most Expensive Barbie®, Barbie® Doll Convention, Washington, DC 2009 ⒸSusana Raab
Image and Text by Susana Raab
I had been photographing leisure time in America for a few years, often travelling a day or two's drive to explore heartland America events like the Hobo's Convention in Britt, Iowa, or the Superman Fest of Metropolis, Illinois. The Barbie® Doll Convention was a ten minute walk from my home in Washington, DC to the hotel which housed it.
Going to the event felt a bit transgressive, as Barbie had been forbidden in my childhood home, and here was the chance to voyeur over the once forbidden fruit. As I negotiated the rows and rows of merchandise and memorabilia, I saw a dark corner where a small crowed gathered around an object encased by glass. As I approached the first Barbie ever made, I marvelled at the whole culture and community which have grown up around Barbie, and were represented in the faces of that crowd.
I've thought a lot about Ernest Hemingway's search for "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" in his fiction, and I've taken ideas from fiction that resonate- as talisman's to incorporate into my own work, as conscious projections, and this image represents that idea. At my most cynical, I might say this is about commodity, culture, and marketing, and supports an uber femme fantasy. But what I saw on that day was also this: a small group of pilgrims gathered around a shrine in communion to their deity, having found for a moment, their clean, well-lighted place.
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