Artists Registry

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.

But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played on the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears,
But I never could find where she lay.

From “The Lost Doll”
Charles Kingsley
(1819-1875)

I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll
Reflections on September 11, 2001

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the communist system, and the end of the Cold War, hopes for a more peaceful world seemed to be justified. The deadly arms race – whether conventional, nuclear, biological, or chemical – had become more senseless than ever. Yet, today our lives are overshadowed by worldwide unrest: religious and civil wars; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; terrorist attacks; and the constant fear of further such assaults.
What will the future hold for our children and grandchildren? This burning question, intensified by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, compelled me to reflect upon such catastrophic events in a photographic project. My own traumatic childhood experiences during World War II and its aftermath have further motivated me to a visual statement. I have used dolls as symbols of childhood innocence and defenselessness. Like the poem “The Lost Doll” by Charles Kingsley, my images are a metaphor for the loss of a peaceful, self-assured life that, until recently, we simply had taken for granted.

Technical Note about My Project:
“I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll” consists of 35 images (27 – 16 x 20 inches, 8 – 11 x 14 inches). These are analog black and white photographs that I hand-colored with oil paints. Some are collages for which I transferred newspaper headlines and pictures onto transfer paper and, from there, onto fabric. I then pasted the fabric details onto the colored photographs. I created these images from 2001 to 2006, and exhibited them in Weingarten, Germany, in September 2008.

Carin Drechsler-Marx
77 East 12th Street, 20E
New York, NY 10003-5009
Tel/Fax: 212-228-3449
carinmarx@yahoo.com