by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Most people’s autobiographies don’t include hangings, gun play or knifepoint abductions. The autobiography of local photographer Anne Marie Route, however, includes all three.
From childhood to adulthood, Route’s life story reads like a checklist of the most violent acts humanly imaginable. From severe domestic abuse to sexual assault, Route has unfortunately experienced just about everything the darkest, cruelest side of society has to offer a girl from Minnesota.
But Route has found a way to turn all of her life experiences of hatred and violence into a visual form of art and awareness. And she does it using Barbie dolls.
Now a resident of Neptune Beach, Route has an ongoing series of photographs that she sometimes displays around Jacksonville called “The ANNual Series.” It will be part of the next ArtWalk, the monthly art show when various galleries downtown open to display their works.
The morbid series is an autobiographical chronicle of her life and each photograph details one morbidly memorable yet catastrophic event from her experiences. For the subject of her photographs, Route symbolically poses dolls to mimic each of her life’s unfortunate exploits. Each photo is named using the year in which the event happened.
For example, in her photograph titled “1985,” a female doll is seen sitting on the bed with her back to the camera while a male doll is holding a handgun to her head. Route said that was the year her abusive high school sweetheart continually showed how tough he was by holding a loaded gun to her head.
In another photo named “1986,” the female doll is seen hanging above an overturned chair beneath her feet, denoting an attempted suicide.
Route came up with the idea for “The ANNual Series” shortly after a serious car wreck she had in St. Croix in August 2004. She had been dabbling with the idea of using Barbie dolls in photos before this but said she was waiting for the right opportunity to do so. After the car wreck, another seriously painful event in her already pain-filled existence, Route figured out what her next project would be.
Using Barbie dolls, she decided to setup and take a photograph for every year that something bad happened to her.
“I looked back and it took me 20 years looking backwards to find a year that didn’t have something traumatic in it,” she said.
Route said she uses the dolls to tell her story because it allows people to make use their own imagination instead of looking at a series of real snapshots using human subjects.
“Using the dolls makes a connection with people,” she said. “It seems to be more so with women, of course, because they usually grow up playing with baby dolls. And with me being female, they can recognize some of the things that I have gone through and can see some of it in their own lives.”
Routes images are brutal and violent and very, very dark but she said the series was produced to be just that - a truthful recollection of her life.
“They are brutal reality,” she said. “They are very honest and violent because that is what happened. This is what I know. This is my autobiography visually.”
Route said the photos are depressing and sad but she mainly thinks of them as “thoughtful.”
“They make me look back at some of the times that I would rather not remember,” she said. “But by putting them out there I am not hiding them any more. I am not embarrassed or ashamed of what happened. It is not a little ghost that is in my closet any more. It is gone now.
“It happened and I am not going to be upset about it anymore. I am not going to let it ruin my life anymore. It was my way to say goodbye to all of those problems.”
Now looking back at the photos she has produced for the series, many of which hang on the walls of her apartment, Route said the process has been very cathartic. Route said even though she looked back on the events of her life for several years and was constantly upset about them, her photographs allowed her to vent her memories. She said the series even allowed her to put a humorous spin on some of her darker moments.
“A lot of people will see the humor in it right off the bat because using the dolls makes it a little bit funny,” she said. “They are able to laugh about it and I can laugh about it. It is easier to deal with things when you can find the humor in it.”
While Route sees her work as a humorous, therapeutic way to view her painful experiences, she said some people have viewed the series as sexually deviant.
“I think that some people see my work as sexual when it is anything but,” she said. “I had a friend say, ‘These are pretty racy, erotic pictures.’ I was thinking, ‘How do you get sex out of this?’”
Route said she thinks some people might view the series as sexual due to the nakedness of dolls, even though they are anatomically void.
For the most part, Route said most of her customers and admirers see her work as truly unique.
“I have heard a lot of people that see my work say, ‘Oh, I have seen somebody else that does something like this but nothing like this at all,’” she said.
Though she has shown the series around town at a few venues, Route said she knows the series isn’t for everyone due to its violent nature. While some artists believe art should be displayed anywhere no matter what the subject matter is, Route said she understands that her series can’t be displayed everywhere, like restaurants with family clientele for example. She has even put a warning on her website, www.scenic-route.net, regarding the sensitive nature of her images.
“I know better than to take my work to a place where it can’t be hung for everybody to see,” she said. “I am sensitive to that and I realize that seeing somebody with a knife to their throat might not be the thing you want to show to a small child. It’s not something I want everybody to see.”
But on Feb. 2, all of the current installments of
“The ANNual Series” will be on display at The London Bridge Pub during ArtWalk. Until then, Route said she will work on producing a few more images for “The ANNual Series,” as well as a different series for a bar in
Jacksonville Beach.