Reborn – a photo essay by Didier Bizet

“Reborn” dolls are astonishingly lifelike versions of real newborn babies.

They first appeared in the United States in the 1990s, and are now the prize of a community of enthusiasts who value above all their extreme realism.

The reborn artists, or reborners, who create them strive to impart a hyper-realistic texture to the dolls, with details that include birthmarks, veins, hair, pores, tears and saliva.

The most sophisticated reborns are even equipped with electronic systems capable of reproducing the heartbeat, sucking and breathing of a real baby.

The dolls have been made available – whole or in kit form – online or, before the coronavirus outbreak, at fairs. At the Doll Show in Valencia in Spain, for example, once known as the most important show in Europe, enthusiasts would queue with prams and babies in their arms. The show was an opportunity for reborn artists from all over the world to demonstrate their knowhow and participate in competitions such as the best painted reborn, the best implanted hair (rooting) or the most beautiful reborn.

• The Valencia fair is regarded is as one of the best in Europe, and an opportunity for collectors to meet each other, present their ‘babies’, and attend workshops.

Joanna Kazmierzack from Poland is one of the most famous artists in the field because her silicone babies offer an extremely realistic flexibility which is much more convincing than the more commonly used vinyl. “They are sculptures, they are art, because they emanate the same kind of emotion as a work of art: fear, pleasure, tenderness,” explains Joanna, whose reborns can sell at auction for as much as €22,000.

• Some reborns are equipped with rechargeable devices that mimic heartbeats, breathing, sucking and head movements.

A jury will rate the different reborn according to precise criteria ranging from the quality of the work to the creativity of the reborn artists. Arms, legs and vinyl heads are stacked by the hundreds on the merchants’ shelves. Alongside, a stand displays magnetic teats, while a little further away a salesman demonstrates a mechanism imitating an infant’s heartbeat.

• Virginia Repilado, a reborn artist from Torrijos, strives for perfection, ‘I will always have to learn more. The more I work, the more perfect the babies will be.’

The reborning process is particularly long. The dolls are initially sold as vinyl kits composed of unpainted parts including legs, arms, belly plate, head and the soft body. The reborn artists paint the kits with as many as 30 layers of subtle colouring. Once the paint is finished and baked to be fixed, they integrate the eyes and implant the hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, made of mohair goat hair, with additional elements such as an umbilical cord, a heartbeat or breathing simulator, as well as magnets to hold the nipples. This long and meticulous operation can take more than 80 hours on average, but for those reborners who aspire to hyper-realism the work takes even longer.

On the fringe of the Valencia show a €900 workshop is hosted over six days by two reborn stars, the British Nikki Johnson and the American Samantha Gregory. The 13 participants from Spain, Italy, Brazil and Portugal listen as a translator helps the English-speaking facilitators explain the modelling techniques to the students.

Among them, a young Brazilian couple, recently arrived from São Paulo, want to develop their reborning business in Brazil by creating kits that other reborners can work. A range of tools stand ready – the same ones used for clay modelling: a pasta-making machine which will flatten the base material in thin layers, aluminium foil, cellophane and a kind of flesh-coloured modelling clay, a polymer clay which hardens in an oven at 130°C.

Away from the fairs catering for artists and collectors, the extreme realism of the reborns has resulted in their use in medical environments, and in promoting mental health and wellbeing. Since 2018 a Moscow maternity ward has been using a reborn doll, an excellent substitute for real newborns in paediatric units, to train students in practical childcare skills.

• Left: Serhiy, injured during the war between Ukraine and Russia, struggled to hold down work while experiencing post-traumatic stress. He has found a degree of financial and emotional stability working a full-time reborn artist. Right: since ‘adopting’ a reborn, Amanda, living near London, has not had any anxiety attacks and has noticed that her depressive episodes are less and less disabling than they were before.

And reborns have been used to effect in the Alzheimer units of some senior medical centres and in hospital geriatric centres. Delphine Trevel, a reborner based in Caen in northern France, provides dolls to local medical centres and also offers a reborning training course to senior medical centre nurses. Her friend, Valérie Morvan, has also created a nursery at a local medical centre in which Alzheimer’s patients can interact with the dolls.

With their widespread appeal – to collectors, couples, the lonely or the vulnerable – it seems the fake babies with artificial lives can promise real comfort and genuine happiness.