Manikins by Mark Jones

Manikins features verses by Zhuang Zhou, Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Emily Dickinson, and John Clare among others, contrasted with the author’s selection of his own photographs of shop window displays from around the world.

I went to poets and translations of poets, particularly Chinese poetry which I personally like, and selected them for their value as brief extracts from the poetic work of people whose work I think is interesting.

The reason I matched them with the images was I wanted people to think about how you read meanings into things. Im not saying that a Chinese poet writing in 2nd Century BC is in some direct way linked to a 20th century mannequin, obviously theyre not, but I wanted to raise the question of the universality of human thought and experience and how in a funny sort of way they do seem to bounce off each other.

There is some communication between the image and the text but its meant to be elliptical, suggestive. That was the bit that took me the longest. But I didnt take it too seriously.”