Around two months ago my sister came home and presented me with a gift--a Barbie cut-out set complete with Barbie, Ken, and a small assortment of outfits.  Although I've never been much of a Barbie fan, and in spite of the fact that I grew up having one doll--the cheaper version of Barbie known as Tammy, it was the gesture that counted.  She knows I once collected paper doll cut-outs and that I have an ongoing project call Paper Dolls.  When I received the gift, I thought how cool--I'd been photographing pages of mannequins with designer dresses, mannequins in store windows, and my own creations of paper dress cut-outs.  I saw this as an opportunity to use it, not as a layered object (like the mannequins and my dresses) but as part of an original photograph.  I thought about the Travelocity ad where the gnome is placed in front of every iconic place around the world.  Barbie could, and perhaps some photographer has done something like this already.  I'm not a world traveler so that idea went out the window.  Then, about two weeks from receiving this gift, my sister calls to tell me that my brother and sister would like to have a family reunion in Hawaii and they were offering to pay for the flight to encourage us to go.  I thought something like this is just too hard to pass up.

I packed up my cut-out Barbie, and flew her to warmer weather, breezy winds, roads lined with Palm trees, and the meditative sounds of the waves coming in from the Bay at Sandy Beach.  Our time in Hawaii was too short and unfortunately I never pulled out Barbie from the notebook I'd placed her in.  Of course I could now insert her into an image of a Hawaiian landscape I photographed.  And, if my portfolio develops in that direction, maybe I will.

So here is Barbie, in her dressed up white mink wrap (mink because little girls need to know she had it all), pink satin dress, and white long sleeved gloves.  Not in Hawaii, but in an attic room.  I wonder what I am trying to say by not placing her in a beautiful landscape.