I have a confession to make. Yes, I am an American and yes, I once owned an American Girl doll. So it’s with duplicitous pride and shame that I present the work of photographer Ilona Szwarc , who moved to the US from Poland four years ago and must have thought we were all mad. For those who don’t know, American Girls are a catalogue-order mini-me that in the past two decades have become a borderline hysterical national craze. Of late Ilona has created this painfully engaging series of girl and doll portraits that ask so many questions about childhood, materialism and the fantasy of “american-ness.” Amazing.