Morton Bartlett, Ballerina Girl

ca. 1955, printed 2006

Bartlett, a self-taught artist who owned an art-supply store and produced catalogues for the Scharff toy company, fashioned a group of eerily lifelike painted plaster sculptures of children in the basement of his Boston townhouse. Over the years, he photographed these figures in a variety of poses, dressed in garments he designed and sewed, creating a secret archive of images that speak of love and loss, loneliness and obsession, with naive eloquence and sublimated pathos.