This photo (which I saw in 1988) was the original inspiration for Despair, and I have been looking for it for years.
I remembered the book it was in was called Modern Primitives, but couldn’t find that it was a book of photos by Chris Wrobelewski, and the existence of the Modern Primitives books by RE/Search just confused me whenever I’d do a web hunt.
Someone just posted it to Bluesky and I got so happy. I’d started to wonder if I’d imagined it.
I know nothing about the subject of the photograph, who they were, how old they were, their gender. I just remember seeing the image and not being able to get it out of my head, and deciding that was what Despair looked like. Mike Dringenberg then took the photo (did I send him the book or a photocopy?) and used it to make the first images of Despair in The Doll’s House.
