These are the working tools of Eleanor Macnair, used whilst seated at a white Ikea desk, within reach of a vast number of Play-Doh tubs containing every colour you might imagine stacked in re -purposed apple crates. Macnair does not have a studio - her Play-Doh art is made in her bedroom  mostly at night times when her young son is asleep or when she can grab some time between working her day job. In the morning light, Macnair photographs the Play-Doh constructions in the area next to her bins in her back yard. Effort is made to get the correct angle of shadow both to accentuate the work, but to also to play out and imagine the position of the photographer who made the original image. Once the photographic document is made the Play-Doh image is destroyed and the materials returned to their yellow pots. If ever there was a good example of recycling and sustainable practice—this is it.

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Macnair’s process is a quiet one, there is no fuss or flamboyance, she inhabits the everyday. Yes, we see her output in books, magazines and exhibition, but there is a sense that the small moments of play and concentration in the act of making are as important to Macnair as any critical or public success.

Eleanor started making her Play-Doh creations in 2013, and her first book, Photographs Rendered in Play-Doh published by MacDonaldStrand in 2015, bears witness to Macnair’s process and the journey to a mastery of her craft. Early works, as seen in that publication, are naively made and rough around the edges, both funny and endearing; naive and poignant. Macnair did not practice art beyond secondary school and she claims to possess no particular creative skill. However, over the time taken to amass her extraordinary and relentless body of work, we can now see how she has honed her skills and mastered her Play-Doh craft. This development is never more apparent than it is in the refinement of Macnair’s trade mark Play-Doh eye.

We can also chart her progress in image selection, responding to the photographic canon but also to less well-known images, bringing our attention to photographs that reside in the darker corners of photographic history, or indeed those that have been left completely unnoticed. Macnair also recognises and points out the medium’s ability to order and to categorise by using typographies to bring together play doh groupings - for example images with signs, birds or settees, to mention just a few.

Macnair has a passionate following on her social networks, and at times detractors, the self-appointed guardians of the medium, questioning her seemingly casual treatment of iconic images rendered in Play-Doh. This reaction is important to Macnair. The re-evaluation of these images, positive or negative, is a central motivation to keep making this work, to render one more photograph. She is asking viewers to look slowly and to think more deeply about photographic images. She is calling for our attention and time; for us to reconnect with these images as records made in an historical, social and political context; for us to disconnect them from their iconic status and to re-see them as powerful records of a person, a place or a time.  

All of this from an accidentally discovered practice refined at an Ikea desk, using an empty wine bottle, a craft knife, a chopping board and, of course, an enormous amount of Play-Doh.

Foreword by MacDonaldStrand 2024

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Publisher: RRB Photobooks, signed
Pages: 80 pages
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 1738516334
Language: English
Price: 15,900 HUF

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Please note that the book prices listed on the website are for informational purposes only. For up-to-date pricing and availability, feel free to contact us at:

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1065 Budapest, Nagymező Street 20.
Phone: +36 30 505 0622
E-mail: bookshop@maimano.hu

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