Artist Statement
"American Girls" is a series of portraits of girls in United States who own American Girl dolls.
Each doll can be customized to look exactly like its owner, yet all of them really look the same. American Girl dolls offer an illusion of choice therefore an illusion of individuality. Despite they play a crucial role for girls in a moment when they are forming their identity. With a wide variety of miniature accessories, a doll hospital, a doll hair salon with personal stylists they are perhaps the most luxurious toys ever invented.
American Girl product defines and categorizes American girls - future American women and that fact raises important questions about who gets represented and how. Branding behind the doll perpetuates domesticity and traditional gender roles. I examine how culture and society conditions gender and how it invents childhood. Gender becomes a performance that is again mirrored in the performance of my subjects for the camera.
Ilona Szwarc is an award winning photographer who lives and works in New York City.
Her work examines gender, identity and beauty in the context of American culture.
Szwarc has had a solo exhibition at Claude Samuel gallery in Paris and has been shown in group shows internationally – in London, Bilbao and New York. Her work has been featured in numerous publications worldwide including, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, The New Yorker, The UK Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine, Surface China, PDN.
She has won World Press Photo 2013 in the Observed Portraits category, 3rd Prize; PDN 2012 Annual in the Personal Category and has been awarded Grand Prize in the Fine Art category of the PDNedu 2013 contest. She has been selected for American Photography 28 and 29.
Her project “American Girls” has received worldwide recognition, having been highlighted in The New York Times Lens Blog, MSNBC Today.com and The Huffington Post, among others.
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