"When I take a photo, I don’t place my dolls within a scene. Instead, I use the setting as a poetic expression of the doll's inner world. Looking through the lens, I keep moving around the doll, until I feel a connection. When I see her looking back at me, smiling or perhaps blinking, I snap the photo.

 

I get lost inside this play. There’s no real goal or purpose. It’s simply about the pleasure of engaging with something that I find intriguing, and towards whom I can radiate affection.

 

My dolls are always elusive. Yes, we communicate, but they do actually live in another dimension, where I cannot enter. This is why they often have a mysterious, distant, and eerie expression in my photos."

 

Leaf Whispers INTERVIEWED BY ELLEN TSAGARIS in Antique Doll Collector Magazine 2016.

 

WHEN DID YOU START COLLECTING?

I’ve always loved dolls. My friends find this weird. I explain to them that although I forced myself to stop playing with dolls at the age of 12, in reality, I never did stop because it’s what I do for a living – I work as a film editor, which means that all day long, I play with tiny digital figures (AKA dolls).

 

In the past, I went on purges, unloading my dolls onto the first child that crossed my path; and then years later, I regretted having done that. I especially miss Nicole, the artisanal, cloth doll that I found in Quebec in 1982.

 

Now that I’m old, I’ve finally gotten serious about dolls; I simply must have the dolls that I want, like right now.

 

HAVE YOUR TASTES CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

My taste has changed a lot over the years. I’m presently drawn towards old dolls; the older, the better.

 

Touched by time and marked by the traces of a child’s play, antique dolls are soulful and poignant. Perhaps their most potent gift is as a “Memento Mori”.

 

My dolls’ broken limbs and time-ravaged faces remind me of my own mortality. This frightening and melancholic awareness is assuaged by the knowledge that my dolls have survived a very long time – beautiful in their decay – and that they will continue to live on, long after I have died. Will my old dolls carry a little bit of my spirit with them?

 

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE TYPES OF DOLLS?

China head dolls are my guilty pleasure. I adore their full, red cheeks and find myself spending hours and hours online, gazing at them, fantasizing about having them live with me.

 

However, my true obsession is antique wood dolls, such as Grodner Tal and Joel Ellis. To me, an antique wooden carries sensual elegance, without artifice or contrivance.

 

Sturdy, strong, functional and dignified, a wooden doll also has an ethereal and whimsical quality. I think this otherworldliness stems from the organic material – the wood – that is constantly transforming, becoming more and more elemental and amorphous.

 

A wood doll breathes with life. It is as if she or he “never quite forgot the great tree of which it was once a living part." (Alice K. Early, “English Dolls”).

 

I live in a rainforest that has been devastated, simply to make trash. Giving back the life that was taken from a tree, through the creation of a skilfully crafted doll, makes me happy.

 

DO YOU SEW FOR YOUR DOLLS?

I don’t sew for my dolls because I don’t know how. Also, I prefer dolls naked, sans-clothes, because a doll’s body speaks to me, as much as her face.

 

That said, I am in total awe of the exquisite, detailed stitching and construction of antique clothes. I’m also emotionally moved by the mending; the traces of the mother or aunty or sister who so lovingly stitched together the torn garment so that the little doll owner could continue to play.

 

I do intend to acquire more antique, hand-sewn doll clothes, regardless of whether or not the articles fit my dolls, because these antique garments are Art.

 

Since I am unable to sew for my dolls, I express my love and adoration for them, through photography. Perhaps I dress them in light and shadow.

 

WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT ATTRACT YOU TO A DOLL?

One vital requisite is that the doll shouldn’t be too loud. The contemporary doll-maker Menya Shoho says, “Dolls unlike sculpture are meant for admiration in private. As it is a private space, I don't like my works being overly talkative. I wish them to be still and gentle; as if I could casually talk with the dolls in everyday life”.

 

I also listen for the ones who still carry the child’s whispered secrets; the haunted dolls. When choosing a doll, I simply stare into her eyes and wait to see if we ‘click’. I also have a weakness for round faces and for those dolls whose open eyes announce eagerness to play.

 

I’m charmed by dolls who are broken or missing parts of themselves. To me, they are full of character, with lots of stories. My china doll Leaf’s limbs are disconnected from her torso, but I don’t want to restore her. I like that her torn body will continue to degrade because it is this quality of falling apart that makes Leaf so endearing and special. I also prefer not to impose myself, to just let the dolls be, as they are. Perfect in their imperfections.

 

However, in spite of being broken, a doll should feel whole, i.e., the body and head need to be integrated, as one. For example, my doll Twig’s cloth body has been repaired into a very strange, eccentric form, and yet Twig is a complete self, she exists as a whole, connected to her body.

 

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR?

Because I long for so many dolls, I have to control myself. Therefore, my next acquisition will be for a specific doll. In the not too distant future, I will set out on a quest for a Grodner Tal, a Milliner, and a Mitsu-ore.

 

Wish me luck.