Shop-window confrontational mannequin, Copenhagen, 1986
Copenhagen, Denmark, Graziano Boutique, August 1986.
From Plastic Girls: 50 Years of Artificial Beauty
Cosmetics, costume, and posture collapse into a single surface of exposure. Here, realism is pushed toward theatrical excess, reflecting a broader mid-1980s Scandinavian shift toward confrontational display, where mannequins abandon neutrality and assert presence through visual aggression.
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© Ikonographia / Roberto Bigano
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READ MORE — PLASTIC GIRLS: 50 YEARS OF ARTIFICIAL BEAUTY
Plastic Girls: 50 Years of Artificial Beauty (1977–2025)
Plastic Girls is a long-term photographic study of window mannequins as cultural artifacts of their time. Created over nearly fifty years, the project examines how artificial female bodies were designed and displayed in public space, reflecting changing ideals of beauty, femininity, desire, and social aspiration. Read as a continuous sequence rather than isolated images, the series reveals how consumer culture repeatedly shaped—and reshaped—the representation of the female form.
All photographs were taken from the street, through shop-window glass, without special access or permissions. Nothing is staged or arranged for the camera: the images record what is openly visible yet rarely observed with sustained attention.
Over time, this accumulation exposes patterns no single moment could reveal—recurring gestures, evolving materials, racial and anatomical codifications, and a gradual movement from abstraction to hyper-realism. The project seeks neither irony nor nostalgia, but sustained looking.
Available Chapters
Plastic Girls: 50 Years of Artificial Beauty — A long-term photographic study of window mannequins as cultural artifacts of their time.
Plastic Girls — The Age of Plastic Innocence (1978–1980) — Early Works – Shop-window mannequins before the rise of performative display.
American Mannequins — Journey into Hyperreality (1982–1988)— Artificial bodies and performative realism in American retail display.
Plastic Girls — Glamour, Aggression, and Display (1980–1997) — A shared escalation toward excess, beyond style, geography, or chronology.
- Spain (1997) — Glamorous Brides — Ritual, spectacle, and artificial femininity in Andalusian display culture.
