Lester Gaba, the inventor of the modern realistic mannequin, became involved emotionally with one of his mannequins, Cynthia. He took her in taxis to parties, to the opera, and even to the Stork Club. Her activities were vividly described by New York journalists. Lester Gaba and Cynthia, according to one reporter, attracted both laughter and envy. They were modeling New York's high life.

During the 1930s, surrealist artists were preoccupied with mannequins, which, as historian Margaret Plant observed, they were viewed as symbols of America's decaying consumerist culture. In the 1938 Exhibition Internationale du Surrealism, artists quoted Salvador Dali in speaking about their mannequins as "phantom object-beings," entrapped in department store windows and other capitalist cages.

Gaba and the 1930s surrealists were right on the mark. They still are. Mannequins are phantom object beings. As body-doubles, they (and their classical sculptural ancestors) cannot be viewed in a neutral way. When we cast our eyes on them, self-regarding thoughts inevitably float through our minds--e.g., about our own shabby sense of fashion, our own imperfect bodies. We must submit to their powers, or we must fight back.

This photo essay, Mannequins in the Marketplace, is grounded in the surrealists' insight that phantom object-beings, like ourselves, are entrapped in capitalist values. The faces, dress, and demeanor of mannequins strongly model established commercial norms. They make sure that the city's ethnic, economic, racial, and gender-orientation subsets know that they are included in this culture, too.

Later, Andy Warhol was also right on the mark. He ripped insights about mannequins out of their surrealist anti-capitalism contexts. This entrapment, Warhol suggested, is pleasant. We voluntarily accept it. In fact, we now regard it as a mark of our cultural progress.

The following images are selected from Mannequins in the Marketplace: Commercialism and Multiethnicity (John Orr, Blurb.com, 2008).