I have found myself in a place where everyone seeks to merge with a common ideal to become one… for those who frequent this place, the body is not a source of life force or movement, but takes on a symbolic aspect. Here, the body is both capital, and status symbol.

This is a place of supplication before the altar of the gods of kitch and orange tans; and the body is the sacrifice laid on this altar. The greater one’s sacrifice, the higher their status.

Frozen in their near-identical poses, the people here are as antique marble statues destined for ruination. Every carefully constructed edifice must eventually, inevitably, collapse… But the collapse may be magnificent and replete with its own kind of incomprehensible beauty.

I gaze at and photograph them up close, so close as not a single person who looks at them on stage will ever see them; in a truly fetishistic manner:

Row upon row of perfect barbies, with enlarged breasts and lips, identical skin tones and see-through high heels reveal the intimate underside of their manicured, mass produced beauty.