VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

A subculture of women who collect hyper-realistic baby dolls is growing around the world. For some, it’s much-needed therapy after losing a child or infertility, while others see the tiny toy humans as a collectible – part art, part addiction. Writer Kelli Korducki goes inside the thriving reborn doll industry

- Kelli Korducki

After suffering a late-term miscarriage, Polish mother of four Katarzyna fell into a state of grief that felt insurmountable. Looking for ways to deal with the loss, she turned to the internet, and in the process came across a subculture that would change her life: women who create and collect hyper-realistic baby dolls. Known as reborn dolls, they are meticulously crafted by artists around the world and have realistic features that include pores, veins and tears – some even replicate the sound of a beating heart.

“Although she had four other children and of course loves them, she had this emptiness inside,” recalls Karolina Jonderko, a photographer whose project Reborn focuses on the powerful emotional response the dolls can offer women. While most of the people who own the dolls are collectors, they can also provide a therapeutic benefit for women who have lost children or are unable to have them, or who suffer from depression. For Katarzyna, the doll has become her fifth child and goes everywhere with the family, including the park, the supermarket and away on holiday. “She said she was supposed to leave the hospital with a baby in her hands,” says Jonderko. “She started browsing through the internet and found the dolls. And that’s how her doll became a part of the family.”

. . . It was on eBay, way back in 1999, that Kellie Eldred found the doll that would change her life. Stripped of its factorymade features, this doll had been remodeled by an artist – or, to use the collectors’ term, reborn – to better resemble an actual infant. Its torso had been weighted with flour; crayonbox approximations of flesh tones were painted over in the bruised pulp palette of living human skin. In the shape of its eyes, the doll bore a striking resemblance to Eldred’s daughter Lexi as a baby.