I See Mannequins

“Standing still. Saying everything.”

It started innocently enough. A mannequin in a shop window. A camera. A growing suspicion that these silent, frozen figures had more to say than anyone was giving them credit for.

What followed was years of documenting the secret lives of mannequins — the abandoned, the proudly displayed, the inexplicably headless, and the ones who have clearly given up but are maintaining appearances for professional reasons. They stand in windows (or on the street), stare into the middle distance, and endure indignities that no sentient being would tolerate — and they do it all without complaint, because they have no choice, and also no mouths.

This project is ongoing, because the mannequins are not going anywhere. They never do.

The full archive — twelve years in the making and in desperate need of an update, much like the mannequins themselves — lives over at iseemannequins.com, where their stories have been told with the respect and seriousness they probably don’t deserve but absolutely need.