'Pink: plush rabbit' in Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2012

My work explores the potential for decorative consumer objects to act as metaphors for thoughts and emotional states in still life photographs. My current project, Pink investigates children’s toys, highlighting the degree to which they have become increasingly gender-specific and stereotypical. Shopping in toy stores with my young son, I was fascinated to see that he adored pink toys and would immediately gravitate to these. When he started school he quickly learnt from his classmates that pink is exclusively for girls. His short-lived pink phase became symbolic to me of the fragile and transient nature of childhood innocence. The toys I have collected and photographed for Pink were originally chosen for their references to commonly perceived feminine attributes such as softness, cuteness and sweetness. In the print process they have been enlarged to a scale far greater than their actual size, transforming them into something rather more sinister.