Carrie Becker

Carrie M. Becker is a contemporary photographer. She is best known for her 2011 body of work, “Barbie Trashes Her Dreamhouse,” a viral collection of images that imagined the titular hero as a hoarder.

After completing her undergraduate studies, Becker spent seven years learning commercial photography in Chicago. After moving to Kansas for graduate school, she earned an MFA in sculpture. While working as textile installation artist, Becker won a residency to the prestigious McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she expanded her plastic and nylon installations, “Emergent Structures.”

She returned home to St. Louis in 2010. Deciding to combine her studio lighting and three-dimensional design backgrounds, she began hand-building and photographing one-sixth scale dioramas. To create these trompe l’oeils, materials such as craft sticks, coffee stirrers, foam board were used, and the scenes were photographed at low angles. “Collyer’s Dollhouse” and “Lilliputian Entropy” followed BTHD, and depicted the interiors of both simple and lavish abandoned homes.

Becker’s teaching experience has included photography and design classes at Forest Park and Lewis & Clark community colleges. She is represented by the Shearburn Gallery, and her work as been featured in Time, HuffPost, and Bust, as well as on PBS and KSDK. She lives in a Victorian home in South City with her husband and two cats.