This is from a series of suburbia pictures I did for American Vogue. Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor-in-chief, calls them “stoppers” – one or two images in the magazine that illustrate an idea. This one was for a story about the fear of ageing. At that time, in 2012, everyone was getting injections: Botox, fillers, things like that. It was the beginning of this idea of enhancing the body, but before the boom in butt implants. People were starting to look artificial.
I had to convince Phyllis Posnick, the fashion editor, of my idea. We didn’t tell Anna. I didn’t want to use mannequins and the closest thing I could find were these realistic sex dolls, which I’d used once before for a shoot for Tom Ford. There’s a company in Los Angeles that makes them. They weigh about 70 kilos, so we had to wheel them around. They’re not easy to manipulate either. If you look closely, you’ll see I purposely made their fingers very crooked, so people would understand they weren’t real.
