Artist Alex Sandwell Kliszynski has created a series of manipulated photographs featuring men and women — mostly women, though — as sexless, but still very much sexualized, Barbie-like figurines.

The images bring up a lot of questions about what it means, exactly, to be an object of desire and what it implies about both the viewer and the person being viewed. Most of the woman photographed are in typical pin-up and cheesecake porn poses, while others more closely resemble pole dancers or webcam girls who attempt to supplement their careers as bloggers.

Are these women more palatable to look at without their sexual organs and genitalia? Are they sexier or less so now that the “naughty bits” have been smoothed over?

Think those questions over, or maybe just look at areola-less boobs, after the jump:

The art of Alex Sandwell Kliszynski [Ask-Art]