When Annette Himstedt came on the scene in the doll world around 1987 with Kathe on the cover of Doll Reader magazine, to date the doll collector had never had such a life-like affordable and vinyl doll of quality to have as her/his own. Annette's dolls had the vivid realism of real children from early Lisa with her laughing open mouth and mismatched teeth to big Kasimir with his own angled jaw, dimples, freckles and teeth. The year Kasimir was made, the Children of the World were the largest child dolls we'd ever seen. This meant collectors were able to purchase clothing in children's stores or to use a favorite dress kept from a child's younger years, not to mention all the seamstresses of doll clothes who were able to let their imaginations go wild. And shoes. These dolls had big feet that fit real kids' shoes. In more recent years, Annette's two 7 year old sized child dolls surpassed any life-like child dolls ever made. Ineke poses for many shots at my house, her open laughing mouth full of laughter and e king answering grins in viewers of my work. Fina and Sina almost as large with the first fully flexible joints in elbows and knees as well as hips, waist and neck allowed the photographer to create many more poses and to incorporate more action style photos in a shoot.
For my own interest in doll's as subjects photography I was suddenly thrilled to take pictures and create photographic stories of realistic doll-children going about their daily life of school, washing up, caring for baby sister or brother, baking cookies and so on. I posed my first Annette Himstedt children the first time in the kitchen with cookie dough and cutters, flour smears on their faces. In my earlier life, I'd worked with deaf children and gotten my degree in child and family studies. Thus, one of my Himstedt 'kids had hearing loss with a self-designed phonic ear. The shape of his hands were with a slight tilt in appropriate fingerspelling letters to "say" "I love you!" My kids joined Cub Scouts and Brownies, went to the doctor and veterinarian and rode in the car to McDonalds. Someone had a broken leg. I tried my best to make these children as multi faceted as possible. All children are beautiful no matter what their particular limitations. I was also able to volunteer for an All Through The House function put on at Christmas time by an organization with "children" posed through out the rooms of the house used participating in traditional holiday activities, including a weighted porcelain baby maybe of teething age, created by Judith Turner who was sobbing her little heart out in her highchair at the family table.
I put braces on Kasimir. Lisa learned with use of a pink balloon to blow bubbles. With fishline helping her, Lisa rode a skateboard down the walk. She used a hula hoop. In my current photography series, Ilai is featured in many stories: a tea party with dragons, discovering her new baby chicks, or walking in the snow with her pot bellied pig. And Himstedt dolls are of a size that they really lend themselves to posing with cooperative real animals. So Annette's dolls in my household have lives and adventures of their own. It would not have been possible to create such an array of photo-stories without this life-like subject doll- line.
It is a wondrous thing for a doll collector, to have a beloved doll and then to see a photographer's work using his/her same Himstedt, revealing the secret life, if you will, of your own loved friend. This allows the photo collector to participate in the doll's world without having to do all the work themselves. Annette Himstedt children dolls were also a great change from fashion dolls and traditional porcelain baby dolls. It is possible to mix them in a photo study with other artist's life sized babies--Rolanda Heimer's babies or Lossnitzer's Dribble babies produced by Goetz Co., to create fascinating compositions and fantasies.
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