Selected images from the 1949 Les Jeux de la poupée (The Game of the Doll) a landmark collaborative work by Hans Bellmer and poet Paul Éluard. Features the hand-coloured photographs of Bellmer’s mutated, jointed female dolls arranged in unsettling, dreamlike poses that blur the line between desire, control, and dismemberment. The images, both tender and disturbing, exemplify Bellmer’s obsession with the fragmented female form and reflect his resistance to the fascist ideal of bodily perfection. The photographs are a key surrealist exploration of eroticism, identity, and the unconscious. Les Jeux de la poupée remains one of Bellmer’s most significant and works.

Hans Bellmer (1902–1975) was a German artist best known for his provocative life-sized dolls and surrealist photography. Bellmer began constructing articulated female dolls in the 1930s, photographing them in unsettling, dreamlike scenes that explored themes of eroticism, control, and fragmentation. His work was condemned by the Nazi regime as “degenerate,” prompting his move to France in 1938, where he became associated with the Surrealists. After the war, Bellmer abandoned doll-making and focused on erotic drawings and prints. He lived in Paris with his partner Unica Zürn until her suicide in 1970, and continued working until his death in 1975.

Robert Ashton, born in Melbourne in 1950, is an Australian photographer known for his distinctive documentary style that emerged in the 1970s. After studying photography at Prahran College (1969–71), he became immersed in a creative community that included Carol Jerrems, Paul Cox, and cousin Rennie Ellis, with whom he shared a studio and worked at Brummels Gallery. His 1974 book Into the Hollow Mountains, documented everyday scenes in Fitzroy with striking intimacy. It was recently republished in an expanded edition. He has exhibited widely and is known for using hand-built large format cameras and traditional printing methods such as photogravure and the Collodion process to produce his work.