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Baby Doll
1972 found avant-garde film documentarist Peter Whitehead ensconced in a chateau in southern France with a teenage heiress model and a month's supply of film and psychedelic drugs. The startling results, never before published, are contained in Baby Doll, a beautiful yet disturbing visual diary of a last four weeks spent in the pursuit of both physical and spiritual erotic extremes.
An uncensored, unflinching photographic journal of sexual metamorphosis and personality disintegration, Baby Doll is also a unique testament to Peter Whitehead's experimental vision, a forbidden legacy of an era simultaneously marked by its innocence and its licence to explore previously uncharted areas of sexuality and psychic experimentation.
Paperback
First published February 1, 1997
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About the author
Peter Whitehead
33 books7 followersUnderground filmmaker, novelist, falconer and music video pioneer Peter Whitehead is no longer in this world, a stunning, overwhelming fact to anyone who knew him or formed a fragment in his fragmented life. He was captivated by myths and in many ways sought to turn his own life into one. Films such as The Fall (1969) appeared to provide keys to the secrets of the media age and were undeniably potent, locking libidinal energy into swinging camera movements and tight 16mm edits. It was a hybrid piece about violence and revolution in the USA: part-essay film, part-avant-garde formalist work, part-personal film, part-psychedelia, part-reportage documentary.
In his guise as a counter-cultural documentarian, the strikingly handsome Whitehead, who has died aged 82, travelled the world, changed his identity, moved between classes and had relationships with numerous glamorous, often famous women – almost like a 60s spy. He was partially emblematic of the age by the way he went from a working-class background, the son of a Liverpudlian plumber, to Cambridge University, there making numerous connections that bubbled up later in his life.
In his guise as a counter-cultural documentarian, the strikingly handsome Whitehead, who has died aged 82, travelled the world, changed his identity, moved between classes and had relationships with numerous glamorous, often famous women – almost like a 60s spy. He was partially emblematic of the age by the way he went from a working-class background, the son of a Liverpudlian plumber, to Cambridge University, there making numerous connections that bubbled up later in his life.
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January 24, 2008
Peter Whitehead, Baby Doll (Velvet, 1997)
Peter Whitehead is best remembered these days for chronicling the rise of sixties London psychedelia in such films as Charlie is My Darling (arguably the finest Rolling Stones film ever made) and Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. Whitehead found himself in the south of France in 1972 with a month's supply of psychedelic drugs, a month's supply of film, and model/actress/heiress Mia Martin (best remembered these days as one of the Benny Hill Show girls during the 1971-72 season). The result was Baby Doll.
Baby Doll didn't see publication for twenty-five years. One wonders, cynically, whether the reason is the nudity or the track marks it exposes in a few of the photos. Either way, Velvet got hold of it in 1997 and brought it to light. The photos are stark black-and-white surrealist images; Whitehead obviously spent a good deal of time during his formative years looking at Hans Bellmer's disturbing photographs of dolls. (Aside from the obvious connection, Whitehead also uses disembodied doll heads and mannequins as props; Mia is the only live subject.)
What sticks in the mind, though, is Whitehead's ability to conceptualize. The whole, though it's obvious in various ways that the photographs are presented out of chronological order, comes together in a coherent way. The book is presented in four "chapters" of photographs, each building on the ones before in surreal/dadaist content until, in the climactic photographs, there are little more than blurred figures. (It's worthwhile speculating that Alan Parker may have had this in mind when conceiving the "Comfortably Numb" segment from Pink Floyd's The Wall; there are a number of similarities between the way the book and the filmed version of the song build.) The construction of the presentation makes this more than just prurient interest in a now-retired TV actress. It's not earth-shattering, and Whitehead wasn't covering any new ground here, but it's not bad by any means. ***
Peter Whitehead is best remembered these days for chronicling the rise of sixties London psychedelia in such films as Charlie is My Darling (arguably the finest Rolling Stones film ever made) and Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. Whitehead found himself in the south of France in 1972 with a month's supply of psychedelic drugs, a month's supply of film, and model/actress/heiress Mia Martin (best remembered these days as one of the Benny Hill Show girls during the 1971-72 season). The result was Baby Doll.
Baby Doll didn't see publication for twenty-five years. One wonders, cynically, whether the reason is the nudity or the track marks it exposes in a few of the photos. Either way, Velvet got hold of it in 1997 and brought it to light. The photos are stark black-and-white surrealist images; Whitehead obviously spent a good deal of time during his formative years looking at Hans Bellmer's disturbing photographs of dolls. (Aside from the obvious connection, Whitehead also uses disembodied doll heads and mannequins as props; Mia is the only live subject.)
What sticks in the mind, though, is Whitehead's ability to conceptualize. The whole, though it's obvious in various ways that the photographs are presented out of chronological order, comes together in a coherent way. The book is presented in four "chapters" of photographs, each building on the ones before in surreal/dadaist content until, in the climactic photographs, there are little more than blurred figures. (It's worthwhile speculating that Alan Parker may have had this in mind when conceiving the "Comfortably Numb" segment from Pink Floyd's The Wall; there are a number of similarities between the way the book and the filmed version of the song build.) The construction of the presentation makes this more than just prurient interest in a now-retired TV actress. It's not earth-shattering, and Whitehead wasn't covering any new ground here, but it's not bad by any means. ***
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