151068844Morton Bartlett19091992For the hundreds of photographs that he made from 1936 to the mid-1960s, Morton Bartlett posed incredibly detailed plaster and clay dolls that he made by hand in scenes that range from the playful to the provocative. The professional quality of the color and black-and-white images, in which dolls dressed as cowgirls and in fur-collared coats appear ready for fashion magazines, reflects Bartlett’s career in commercial photography, although he largely kept this aspect of his work private. The fifteen dolls that he created are children (twelve girls and three boys) between the ages of eight and sixteen. About half-life-size and articulated, each took around a year to make and was given a wig of human hair and hand-sewn outfits. The dolls are also anatomically correct, as revealed in the nude photographs that he staged, along with more dramatically lit studio-like shots and candid images of dolls reading books or enjoying the beach. Bartlett was born in Chicago in 1909 and lived much of his life in the Boston area, also working in advertising and graphic design. There are only two known instances of him sharing this body of work: once in a 1962 article in <em>Yankee</em> magazine titled “The Sweethearts of Mr. Bartlett” and another in a twenty-fifth-anniversary report for the Harvard class of 1932 in which he stated, “My hobby is sculpting in plaster. Its purpose is that of all proper hobbies—to let out urges that do not find expression in other channels.” Shortly after the 1962 article, he put the dolls and the photographs into storage, where they stayed until they were removed from his home following his death in 1992. After the dolls’ rediscovery in 1993, when art dealer Marion Harris acquired them at an antiques fair, there has been speculation about what they meant to Bartlett. Some have theorized that they represent a longing for a family, as Bartlett was orphaned at the age of eight and later adopted by a wealthy couple in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Others, though, such as his friend and neighbor the sculptor Kahlil Gibran, have opined that he may have made the dolls intending to market them as toys. Whatever his intention, there is an uncanny life to the photographs that transcends their artificiality, suggesting an interest in how identities are formed and made through images. Allison C. Meier, 2025 Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).MortonBartletthttps://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/2760/full(1909–1992)ChicagoBostonBostonChicagoBostonBostonChicagoBostonBostonMorton Bartlett