Renowned photographer Matthew Rolston has created a captivating portrait series featuring ventriloquist dummies from the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, transforming silent figures into compelling photographic subjects. The project, titled "Talking Heads," showcases approximately 200 carefully selected dummies from the museum's collection of more than 700 figures, each captured in five-foot by five-foot square format portraits that reveal their unique personalities and haunting expressions.
Rolston's fascination with the Vent Haven Museum began after discovering it through an article by Edward Rothstein published in The New York Times in June 2009. Despite knowing little about ventriloquism at the time, Rolston became deeply intrigued by the poetry of these figures and the ways they were brought to life as expressions of their creators – both the figure-makers and ventriloquists who gave them purpose.
The photographer approached his subjects based on their visual appeal rather than their historic or cultural significance. "The faces that spoke to me most had expressions that I found enigmatic, pleading, Sphinx-like, hilarious, and disturbing – all at once," Rolston explained. He emphasized that the greatest portraits are about finding a connection with the subject's eyes, noting a disturbing expression of yearning and desire in these wooden gazes.
Ventriloquism itself has ancient roots that extend far beyond modern entertainment. Long before music halls, vaudeville, radio, or television existed, shamanism and ritual practices employed similar techniques. When shamans spoke to their tribes, channeling voices of spirits – both animist and divine – they likely used the same methods as modern ventriloquists. All forms of contemporary entertainment and storytelling emerge from these same primal beginnings.
What makes ventriloquism particularly fascinating as an art form and culture is its embodiment of what Rolston calls "the God complex." A performer gives birth to a lifelike, moving, speaking facsimile of another human being, creating something both primitive and miraculous. During performances, ventriloquists literally place their hands inside the figures' bodies and heads, making them appear alive through various moving parts – mouths, rolling eyes, rising and falling eyebrows, turning heads, and sometimes additional features.
Unlike traditional puppets controlled by strings, these dummies appear to move and speak independently, often mocking their creators or social conventions while seeming as intelligent as their human partners – usually appearing even smarter. The bond between human and creation represents the most gripping aspect of ventriloquism for Rolston, describing it as "the space between." Like classic two-man comedy acts, ventriloquists and their dummies function as partners, each serving as the other's yin and yang in a constant give-and-take relationship.
Time's effects on these figures speak volumes in a language that is both satirical and tender. Their expressions evoke serenity and melancholy that suggests spiritual longing, authentically embodying three telling truths: nothing is perfect, nothing is ever finished, and nothing lasts. In their current solitude, separated from their makers, they may represent liberation from the materialistic world.
No longer aided by the human voices that once spoke magically through them, the Vent Haven figures now communicate through their simple physical presence. As Rolston paraphrases American poet Helen Hay Whitney: "These old lost stars rise and gleam once more." The dummies don't merely channel humanity – they fetishize it, with human history written all over them as overwhelmingly, intensely human objects.
Art critic Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, in her analysis of the project titled "Dummies Dreams Fulfilled," observes how these figures stare expectantly at viewers, as if awaiting response. The inhabitants of the Vent Haven Museum regularly startle and impress visitors with their collective gaze, prompting questions about how to respond to such apparent yearning. Rolston succumbed to their silent pleas by creating these monumental portraits.
Each photograph's five-foot by five-foot square format holds considerable significance, representing neither conventional vertical portraits nor horizontal still lifes, but an intentional combination of both. Rolston treats these ventriloquist dummies as individual subjects, their personalities revealed through hair and eye color, eyebrows, nose and mouth shapes, and even ear size – the same characteristics that fascinate him when photographing fashion models, celebrities, and entertainers.
The photographer made the astute decision to depict these handcrafted performers as living beings, which requires little imagination considering their remarkable lifespans. These figures spent their careers on the laps of attentive but controlling partners who commissioned them from specialist figure-makers, designed with rolling eyes for exasperation, rising brows for surprise, wiggling ears for amusement, and even the apparent ability to drink or smoke like their nightclub audiences.
Many of these dummies traveled the world making people laugh until they or their owners outlived their usefulness. Now in silent retirement, they perform no more, yet in Rolston's portraits, these "ventriloquial figures" look improbably alive. The photographer was moved to reanimate them through photography's alchemical medium, selecting subjects from the museum's vast collection simply because he responded to their appearance – whether striking, exotic, or disturbing.
Empathy drove Rolston to invest considerable time and resources in this project, creating these images for one of art's defining reasons throughout history: he appreciated their appearance and wanted to influence how they would be perceived, integrating them into larger visual culture. The influence of renowned photographer Irving Penn is evident in this approach, as Rolston continues exploring the boundaries between portraiture and artistic documentation in his compelling "Talking Heads" series.
