Most human beings swoon at the first sight of a baby. No matter how homely — or loud — they elicit a primal response from pretty much everyone.

But not Rebecca Martinez.

She’s a perfectly nice 62-year-old photographer who was the oldest of seven children, which meant that she spent much of her childhood caring for her siblings: helping her mother change, feed and bathe them in their Los Angeles home. After that, there was no romance for her in having or raising a child, so she never had any of her own.

Still, she does have many “part-time children in her life,” and she is always interested in exploring unfamiliar worlds and feelings.

That led her to immerse herself for five years in the Reborn subculture, a growing group, almost exclusively women, who collect shockingly lifelike handmade dolls of newborn babies. Many of them treat the dolls as if they were real members of their families — taking them shopping and out to restaurants.

“Many of them have a very, very strong genetic makeup to nurture and they love babies,” Ms. Martinez said. “And many are mothers. A lot of people think these are people who can’t have children. Some are, but many of them have children and love the baby stage of nurturing. They can love a baby, they can nurture it in a permanent way.”

Each doll is unique and made by individual artists of varying degrees of skill. Once completed, they are ”adopted” from “nurseries” that sell the dolls, for anywhere from a few hundred dollars to up to $15,000. They come with names and often adoption papers.

Rebecca Martinez

Reborn culture started around 1990, with people stripping the paint and hair off store-bought vinyl dolls and painstakingly reworking them to be more lifelike. Now some people use kits with doll parts that when assembled are weighted to feel like a real infant when held.

After discovering this movement, Ms. Martinez bought her own doll for research and started exploring the burgeoning subculture, attending conventions, photographing baby-beauty contests, baby showers, owners and artisans.

“In general, most of the women are Anglo, conservative, Christian and right-to-lifers,” Ms. Martinez said. “All of the things that I’m not.”

When Ms. Martinez travels, she will sometimes bring one of her own five reborn dolls to photograph people’s reactions. She prefers to carry them in open bags because she feels uneasy putting them into closed containers, and her suitcases are always searched by airport security if a doll shows up in a scan. This leads to unusual encounters — like when other people in line get upset thinking that a real baby is about to be harmed by X-rays as they pass through security (Slide 13).

Rebecca Martinez

“These dolls are very powerful objects,” she said. “If I bring one of these dolls out, there’ll be a group of people around me very, very fast. They soon know it’s not real, but people have very strong reactions. I’ve seen people who will hold them, and their bodies will start responding and they’ll be rocking them. And then they realize and feel a little embarrassed.”

Sometimes, women who have lost a newborn have commissioned artists to make a reborn doll that looks exactly like their deceased baby. Modeled after photographs of the real infant, these dolls are called portrait babies.

One of her subjects, Min Lee (Slide 12) who runs a “nursery,” sells most of her dolls to customers in China. While some of them adopt dolls that look Chinese, the majority want Caucasian-looking babies, as do most buyers elsewhere.

While Ms. Martinez respects the work of many of the artists who create reborn dolls, she does not share the feelings of the women who make up this subculture.

“For me, they’re dolls that are beautifully made, crafted, but part of my fascination is I don’t feel these things,” she said. “I’m fascinated by how people react, but I’m very, very neutral about them.”

Everyone has different obsessions, but ultimately, Ms. Martinez’s series “PreTenders” is about people choosing whom — or what — to love.

“It is a personal choice, where we put those emotions,” she said. “People will love people and living creatures, but when people choose something that’s not real, and project all this love into that, I do my best to try to understand it.”

“People are less judging when men choose to love an inanimate object like a racing car,” she added. “Why are people so judging when women choose to love something that looks so real?”

Rebecca Martinez

Ms. Martinez’s “preTenders” first came to our attention by way of fotovisura. Ms. Martinez will participate in a group show, “The Reality of Fiction,” at Redline art space in Denver from March 8 through April 28.

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