The Russian Doll is Kristel’s most intimate work to date, a series of new black and white photographic portraits of women who have experienced adversity in their lives.
Inspired by the wartime photographers who carried their own portable darkrooms, the photographs have been developed in a specially designed camera, which sits in the belly of a Russian doll. Kristel was given a Russian Doll as a child, a recognisable object and a popular souvenir, and kept it until she moved into a women’s refuge herself. During this time her view of the object changed it became ‘a symbol of femininity and fertility and a caricature of how women are sometimes viewed and treated; like a personal ornament that can be picked up and put down.’
