We laugh and cry, we feel happy and lonely. We go shopping, dining, driving, and even travel together just like ordinary people do in their real lives. “What if I create an artificial eternity? What if I give a doll a new birth with a new identity? What if I make the one stay with me forever in the fantasy world I construct?”įor the project titled “Still Lives: Eva Si14e”-named after two words, “forever” and “Eve,” who were the first woman according to the creation myths of the Abrahamic religions-Eva and I have an uncanny relationship that began the day she came of out a box.

I know human-like but inanimate objects are not going anywhere. That loneliness is why I became interested in photographing dolls. Seeing them leave me does not get easier no matter how many times I experienced. However, people, moments, and memories I wanted to last forever have left, died, or disappeared, and I know the rest of them will do the same. I had a faith that my family, friends, and love would go on forever and with me, as long as I did my best for them. I believed in eternity when I was an innocent child. This is because I now am afraid of what comes next. I feel the loneliest in my biggest moments of happiness. I always face emptiness when I come home from work or parties. However, I find myself home alone when I wake up in my bed. I talk, drink, and sing with many people all the time. I know what people want, how to make them happy, and how to enjoy moments. And after a few years of inviting them into a photographic world I staged, I started asking myself, “Why do I really photograph dolls?”

I began photographing dolls in 2001 to listen to their voices, and see their secret lives once again as I did in my childhood. It was Monday afternoon, December 29, 2014, the very first day I met her. My hands were trembling slightly as the cutter went along the taped line. I sat down in front of the box with a box cutter. She’s going to stay there with you forever as she looks now.”Ī month later, I received a giant box from a sweating FedEx deliveryman. “However, she’s not going to leave you behind or die. She is expensive,” Brian, a representative of a silicone sex doll company in Japan, told me on the phone. “It’s not about a sex doll, but all about our solitary existence in human society.”

The loneliest doll