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Title: Baby Doll by Peter Whitehead, Jack Sergeant, Iain Sinclair ISBN: 1-871592-78-X Publisher: Creation Books Pub. Date: February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)

Rating: 3
Summary: The Rolling Stones it ain't!
Comment: 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. ***