DEAN BEVAN: Five years ago, if someone had told me that I was doing what I am doing now,
I would have laughed and said, 'No way!'
DEAN BEVAN: It’s too weird, too creepy really. But now I can’t imagine not doing it.
DEAN BEVAN: No it’s not too weird, is it? RHIANNON BEVAN: I mean…
DEAN BEVAN: My name is Dean Bevan. I am a retired psychiatric nurse and I am a doll photographer.
DEAN BEVAN: I share my home with at least twelve dolls, plus another five heads
that I use in different photoshoots.
DEAN BEVAN: It started about just over three years ago. I’ve always been interested in photography.
This is Sarah, she is the first doll I got. So she does have a special place in my heart, I guess,
is the right way to put it. When I ordered Sarah, I wasn’t really sure what I had in mind. It was just one of those
things, like an itch I wanted to scratch. When I get an idea in my head, I just became more and more fascinated
with the whole concept of having something that looked very real. Within hours, I stopped seeing her as a thing
and more as a something else. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole to the point where I
constantly talk to my dolls, I do talk to them occasionally.
I became intrigued really, as to what it would be like to have something that looked very, very real and human in
the house and whether that would give me a sense that I had some company here. So I have just accentuated the
eyes a little bit with some wings there and I did put a bit more blue eyeshadow on. I had a few people say,
you know, how will you cope if people were rude to you, say disparaging things? But I’ve got pretty thick skin,
to be honest, I have worked in psychiatry for 34 years. I see myself as a kind of an artist in a sense,
I want people to like what I do. I’m hoping that once they see it, they will like like it or at least accept that it’s not
the creepy thing they thought it was.
DEAN BEVAN: If someone is going to be critical, I will engage with them, ask them you know, why they feel like
that. But I mean some people do have very entrenched views. Yeah, I am not expecting to change any minds,
but just to open people up to the possibilities of different things is great, that’s good enough for me.
DEAN BEVAN: The media keeps using the term 'sex doll.' That immediately limits them to that function,
and so I hate that term, I don’t use it.
DEAN BEVAN: Well, I wasn’t going to talk about that, I don’t with the, all my dolls. I do, what I would say is I feel
very fond of Sarah my first one. Then I see it, her as the, I don’t know what the word is to use.
I think you said person, but she is not a person, but she did open the door to what I do now.
You know, I am very grateful that I found her.
DEAN BEVAN: I hadn’t admitted to the kids how lonely I was feeling at times, and I didn’t want to burden them
with it. My kids are wonderful, they are very open-minded and I am very proud of them and I should have
really trusted that they would get it, you know. So it eventually came out and I was really relieved to be able
to talk about it to them. I am very pleased that they supported me in what I was doing.
DEAN BEVAN: But these ones, I quite like that one. She does look quite tall, doesn’t she?
RHIANNON BEVAN: Oh yeah, definitely... DEAN BEVAN: She is yeah, see now, here is a good example, later I can see I made a mistake.
I should have had her foot on the ground. It doesn’t look natural, does it like that?
RHIANNON BEVAN: Yeah, but people could, might sit like that.
DEAN BEVAN: No, that would be uncomfortable, I think.
RHIANNON BEVAN: I mean, I knew for ages you were doing this, but you know, you thought you were getting
away, but you weren’t. Because it was, you know, you put the pictures up and they were so obviously dolls.
DEAN BEVAN: Yeah, I think I was probably kidding myself to a degree. I thought that they could be a person,
but looking back, I mean yeah, Sarah of all of the dolls I have got she probably looks more like a love doll than all
of the others put together. But I think I was filtering that out at the time.
But yeah, looking back I can say I was bit of a turkey, really.
RHIANNON BEVAN: You know, when we had the conversation, I was quite upset and hurt because I
thought well you've just done this thing that's really embarrassing and you haven’t even talked to Zack and I about it.
RHIANNON BEVAN: The turning point was thinking, if this is the thing that makes you happy, why would I stand
in the way of that? Even though I don’t have to like it, I just have to not be horrible about it and then gradually
from just accepting it, I actually kind of liked it. So, I thought, this actually kind of, cool.
DEAN BEVAN: I am celebrating the beauty of femininity. I love women, I try and portray what I see which is just,
you know, a lovely image. I am not trying to overly sexualise the images I take, at all. I think these are
pictures that if they were a real girl, you’d see them in a magazine, you wouldn't think twice.
Yeah, I would like to see one of my pictures in the magazine at some point. My message to people that
think they are just sex dolls is just open your eyes and look again because they are not.
They are works of art in their own right and they can be great fun.