Making Believe
In Making Believe, a series of color photographs, Laurie Blakeslee stages sinister-looking toys and figurines in tableaus that suggest mental anxieties. As if performing for the camera, plastic toy figures are cast as surrogates in an adult fairy tale. Pouty lips and eyes, drooped into a melancholic expression, create a mood amplified by the uneasiness of an ambiguous space. In an environment of soft focus, a once joyful expression now implies a false gesture. A rough plastic seam along a bent arm interrupts the narrative with evidence of its manufactured birth. For the characters locked within this photographic surface, Making Believe becomes a strategy for maintaining the illusion of normalcy.
