Longing

Gregory Moon

Interview by L. Valena
January 17, 2024

Can you please begin by telling me about the prompt that you responded to?

It was a drawing called “Longing For Touch,” I believe. It looked to be an ink drawing of two men: one kind of reclined and the other one starting to lay on top of him. But what's interesting about it is that the skin of both of them appears to be scales, or they're wearing suits that are scales or something. I was just stuck on that. Do they have scales? What does that feel like? Is that why they can't feel the other one’s touch? You know, I went kind of crazy in my brain about it.

Did you know pretty quickly how you wanted to respond to this, or did you have to chew on it for a while?

I really had to chew on it. As a photographer, the doll stuff I've been doing is pretty recent. It's only been the last couple of years. I normally did a lot of self-portraits and portraits of other people. But for this I really wanted to do something involving the dolls. When I initially saw the piece and I had that reaction about how that must feel, I didn't know how to do that with a doll. I was really stuck on that at first. For the first couple of days, I had no idea what I was going to do. Then I started focusing on just that sense of longing and it just popped into my head immediately.

So you decided against going with scales?

[laughs] I thought about it! It seemed really difficult. I thought about wrapping a doll in tin foil somehow. I was brainstorming all kinds of weird things, which I may still try. But in the end, I like what I did better. I typically like to strip things down. Once I have an idea, I just keep simplifying it and simplifying it over and over until I feel like it's done. The tin foil scale thing just seemed way too complicated and too convoluted, and nobody would really get it. There's a certain point, especially when you're working with miniatures, where sometimes things just don't work the same way they would work in real life.

If you do ever do that tin foil experiment, I would love to hear about it and see what you come up with. We love to hear about the other ideas that sprout from people’s experience with Bait/Switch. So you settled on interpreting the longing. How did you get started? What was your process?

I almost feel like I cheated a little. You can see the inspiration picture that I included, and they're very similar. I had shot that one maybe a month ago, and that was more inspired by the opening in the Barbie movie where they did the 2001 take-off. I wanted to do something related to that, where people were almost worshiping Barbie. I had that idea at the time and I shot it. Then when I was thinking of longing, I thought I could do the same thing because she's separated from them by glass. What I like about it is you really can't tell where the longing is placed. Is she longing to get out of there? Are the people longing to be her because she's so beautiful? It goes both ways, I think.

Once I figured that out, I decided that instead of a gold metallic backdrop, I really wanted to use silver. I lined the people up the same way, using double-sided tape to make them stay there. It was pretty simple. The first time I shot it, there was a lot of trial and error with the lights hitting the bell jar, causing glares. You could sometimes see either me or my camera equipment in it, so that took a while to figure out. But after that, this took like five minutes because I had already done it once.

I love it. How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I was actually thinking about that the other day. I've been working for almost 25 years now, but like I said, I started with just self-portraits, and they also tended to have a sense of longing to them. Initially that just happened, and after a while I started doing it deliberately. They just had a very melancholy feel to them. In general, I think my work is like that, but in particular a lot of my self-portraits. I did a lot of nudes and even those were a little sad. They were just kind of a bummer, and a little dark in theme, which I feel is a common thread that I even see in this piece. A lot of people might not, but I really feel for the doll and her sense of isolation. It’s something I can always pick out when I look at my work.

I think that’s an important element. And it’s particularly clear with the dolls because they’re never smiling. But I value that kind of vulnerability or moodiness.

Same here.

So why the dolls? What got you started in this era of your photography?

It was kind of weird because I'm not really into dolls. I'm not a doll collector, but I'm finding that most of the people following me on social media are. I just fell into it accidentally. I got my photography degree relatively late in life. I just finished that about ten years ago. In school, we had an assignment to tell a story in like twelve photos, which could be anything we wanted. I of course procrastinated and had no idea what I was going to do until the last couple of days. I just had no ideas, and I was desperate. I decided to buy a doll and I came up with this crazy story. I’d read this Vogue article written by a black woman, essentially saying that black women's features are now the new standard of beauty. So I went with that and made a doctor Barbie who was literally cutting the faces of off black Barbies and gluing them onto white Barbies.

Whoa, that sounds intense!

I got a four point on it. I actually have a couple prints from it in my house because I loved it so much. Years later, I’m in my late 50s now and I’m not really photographing myself all that much anymore. During covid, I really didn't have access to other people and I was trapped in my house, so I started ordering dolls on eBay. I was playing with them in my house, doing a forced perspective kind of thing, where they looked like they were full-size humans in my house. And I've been doing it ever since. That just led to more ideas, so I bought more dolls. Every once in a while, I'll be in a toy store and I'll see a prop that will give me an idea. It just grew out of control.

I noticed that your doll pieces are always period pieces. There's never anything very contemporary in there. It's always a throwback.

I just really love retro anything. I collect a lot of movie memorabilia, particularly from the ‘70s, but I do like the ‘60s as well. I like the photography style of those eras. And doing it with dolls is so much easier than getting a model, styling her to look like Twiggy, figuring out what she's going to wear. It's so much easier to buy a little paper backdrop that looks like it's from the era, stick it on the wall, put the doll in front of it, and bam! And then I can even use the colors, the photography, and the portrait style that were popular in those times on top of it. It's fun to me to push it and see if I can make a photo that really looks like an actual old photo.

That's something that I've really particularly enjoyed about your work. Maybe because I love the ‘70s too. That authenticity makes it really special. You know, a big difference between this image and that scene in the movie is the glass. That suggestion that she’s in captivity and on display gives me King Kong vibes.

Yes, I like that!

Is she dangerous?

Well, [hesitates] …no. I guess if I think about it, I can figure out all kinds of ways that she is, but when I was shooting it, that wasn't my intention at all. I really wanted to make it look like the 2001 shot. I was actually bringing in rocks from outside and trying to make a little desert scene, but it was just too big for how I work and the space that I have to work in. I just couldn't do what I wanted. So then I was thinking of that King Kong idea. I thought that maybe there's some kind of cage I could find, but I wasn’t finding one that was right visually. But I store and display a lot of my collectibles under bell jars, so I thought I’d just use one of those. Then I realized that it was bringing all this other stuff with it. As soon as you put her under that jar, it changes it, and I actually liked that better in the end. I thought it was cool. Cool enough to use twice!

What I wondered right away was, “Is she an alien?” and “Can she breathe in there?”

Those thoughts never even occurred to me.

In addition to Barbie, I’ve noticed that some of your dolls are other famous people. Are you exploring celebrity culture or icon status here? Does that mean something special to you?

No, that was a weird, separate thing that I did. These dolls generally are just generic dolls, but I do have a separate Instagram for the Kristen McMenamy doll. I actually had that doll made, simply because I'm a huge fan of the woman. Once I started photographing dolls and I started getting followed by so many doll collectors, I started hearing about people who would do celebrity dolls and repaint the faces to anyone you want. I heard about Noel Cruz and I thought he was the guy to do this doll, so I had him do one. I also had him do a Farrah Fawcett for me because I'm also a very big fan of hers.

So I have both of those, but I gave the Kristen doll her own Instagram page in the hope that Kristen McMenamy would actually follow it. A week after I set the page up, she started following it. Now it's been up about a year. I still only have about 200 followers, but one of them is her. She loves the photos, she comments on them all the time, but the woman will not mention it on her Instagram! [both laugh] I'm really hoping she will. I've actually mailed her prints, which she loved, and I'm dropping tons of hints. I’m hoping she’ll just say, “Hey, check this out, somebody made a doll of me!” My followers would go up overnight.

Oh, anyone who follows her would want to see this.

I even think people in the fashion industry would think it was cool. There’s no other doll of her in the world! But my only goal was to get her to follow, and she is, so I’m very happy about that.

Mission accomplished. Okay, now that you are on this side of this process, what is your advice to a new person getting their prompt today?

I would say the best advice is your advice, which helped me a lot. You said it doesn't have to be your most amazing piece of work. Just have fun with it. That's what I would say. My first day, I was really stressing about it, but once I remembered that, the ideas started falling into place and I just relaxed basically.

It's funny how not trying so hard is actually more productive.

Call Number: Y118VA | Y120VA.mooLo

Gregory Moon is an artist and photographer currently living in Michigan. In addition to self-portraits, Gregory works with dolls and miniatures to explore a variety of subjects.