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Ilona Szwarc is a polish artist, who in 2008 moved permanently to New York City. She took an early interest in film and photography and like most eastern European kids in the 90’s, the first camera she ever played with was a family owned Zenit. Before graduating with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York, Ilona worked in the film industry with pretty big names, such as Jonathan Glazer, Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda.
Recently, Szwarc has been receiving a great deal of attention with her project “American Girls”, having been highlighted in The New York Times Lens Blog, MSNBC Today.com and The Huffington Post, among others.
photo flavorwire.files.wordpress.com
If you’re not a 16 year old American girl, then you probably have no clue what American Girl dolls are. Apparently American Girl dolls are extremely popular toys for girls in the States. Their design embodies contemporary cultural values. They were conceived as “anti-Barbie” toys modeled after the body of a nine year old. The collection, launched as a catalog line in 1986 with just three characters, has sold an estimated 23 million dolls in 27 years, according to the company’s figures. There’s also American Girl magazine, 17 American Girl retail stores that welcome 54 million visitors a year, and 143 million American Girl books sold.
photo www.slate.com
When Ilona moved to New York, she wanted to become a street photographer, so she began going out every day and photographing in places like 5th Avenue, where she started to notice girls carrying lookalike dolls with matching outfits. After a lot of research on the American Girl phenomenon, she started posting announcements on forums and fan pages that she was looking for girls who own this kind of dolls to be photographed, and got tons of responses: she went on traveling across the country and photographing roughly 100 girls in a period of over 2 years.
photo beautifuldecay.com
The American Girls project focuses on American youth culture and gender identity – what it means to be a girl in America today. The first thing that struck Ilona was the name: considering it is actually called American, it gives a sort of exclusive feel to foreign girls, and maybe a chance to fit in. It did so for the artist herself, as the doll project became a vehicle for her to get access and to meet girls and their families, to see how they live, spend time with them and to discover what it means to be growing up in the US and what it means to be an American girl.
photo www.ignant.de
American Girl dolls offer “an illusion of choice therefore an illusion of individuality”, although the basic premise of those dolls is that you can create your mini-me version, girls are in fact offered a limited number of choices. All of the dolls have mostly the same features – the only choices that are given to girls are different skin colors, eye colors and many hairstyles, yet the basic face mold and figure of all dolls stays the same – slim, petite and androgynous shape. Above all, domesticity and traditional gender roles are still being perpetuated only with a different idea of body image (don’t tell anyone but my guess it’s only for marketing purposes *wink*).
photo www.therawbook.com
In order to not be confused with an American Girl doll advertisement, Szwarc photographed each girl without the specific girly smile, witch ads an uncomfortable feel to the project, like there’s something just not right there. In any case, however creepy it may be for some of you, it is a project worth seeing, and if you happen to be in New York these days, you can catch it at FOLEY gallery, until the 3rd of July.
P.S. – Write us if afterwards you buy an American doll, we’d love to see a picture.
photo tumblr.com
photo www.revistaexclama.com
photo 1stdibs.com
by Alexandra Mateescu
Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.
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