Wannabe
Elisa González Miralles
La Fabrica
English
Softcover, with silicon dustjacket
64 pages
190 x 280 mm.
2017
ISBN: 9788416248858
Wannabe is a photographic project about doll-like girls in Japanese culture —about the objectification of these women to serve societal customs that lead to android-like behaviours. It illustrates how people who grow up in a given culture unconsciously feel the need to follow a predetermined role. With this work, Elisa González Miralles aims to question how societal standards —not only in Japan, but elsewhere— constrain human behaviour and the development of identity. Questions that affect us all, especially considering the obsession with self-projection in today’s society.
The idea of Wannabe starts with a trip that the photographer made to Japan in 2002. At that time the author discovered the habit of “replacing” real women with these hyperrealistic dolls. In 2013, she returned to Japan with the idea of doing work on those objects, but she encountered the paradox that women themselves adapted their shapes and even altered their physical appearance to become replicas of those artificial, anatomically and physically perfect products, but lacking in soul.
The photographs that compose the series Wannabe test the sharpness of the viewer being at times more than difficult to differentiate the images of real women from those that correspond to dolls. And to deepen this conflict, Gonzalez Miralles uses a symbolic element: the balloon fish, delicious and exclusive meat, but very dangerous if not prepared properly, because it contains a neurotoxic poison that causes muscle paralysis and death by asphyxiation. This fish represents, she says, “the unconscious of these women, who, doomed to meet social desires are necessary to meet the standard of beauty imposed slogans”.
About the Artist:
Elisa has a Masters in documentary photography from EFTI Madrid (2007). She received a grant from World Press Photo, Asian Europe Foundation and the Philippine Centre of Photo-journalism to take part in the Urban Youth project in Manila (Philippines, 2007), and participated in Darkside II in the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland, 2009). In 2009, Elisa founded the MADPHOTO academy (Madrid) together with fellow photographers Damián González and Manolo Yllera.
About the Publisher:
With the birth of PHotoEspaña festival, in 1998, La Fábrica began to publish great photography books: exhibition catalogues, authors collections and institutional books among others, to become, 20 years later, the Publisher of reference that is today. With more than 600 titles, La Fábrica is present in all markets of the world thanks to its international distribution, with a catalogue that gathers both classics of photography as the most restless and youngest authors on the international scene, also including books of art and literature.
