I haven’t yet figured out the fascination people have with themes like death and blood, but for whatever reason, these tend to be the ideas that my models love… and many of my viewers too. I don’t mind doing them, but it’s not really the personality or the mark that I want to leave on my body of work. What to do?
This one is from a while back, but I’ve recently found myself editing it and I like what’s going on in this shot. I went into this shoot knowing I had access to two things — a bald model and a warehouse — and my goal was to turn that into a variation on the theme of the WWII concentration camps and the various medical experiments performed on people therein.
Basically, I wanted a scene from the X-Files. I think I got it with this.
To me, the power of this photo is the angle. Yes, she’s twisted in a pose only a corpse would be comfortable in. Yes, she’s covered in blood, eyes wide and mouth gaping. But to me, it’s the fact that we the audience are experiencing this photo at eye level that really sells the idea. We’re not looking down from six feet up, like a forensic photographer. We’re looking straight on, from the point of view of the rat that’s about to come lick up the blood…
No comment. Just a photo.
A single light from overhead, with barndoors to contain it, made exactly the kind of eerie shadows I wanted for this “bust” of a bald female. The heavy, directional shadows also allowed me to hide some details I didn’t want showing, while still allowing for full-frontal nudity.
I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about naked women holding fruit that really tends to carry strong undertones and thought-provoking implications. I guess we have The Bible to thank for that.
No people or animals were harmed in any way during the creation of this photo.
Sometimes you have an idea floating around in your head for days, even weeks, and you think you’ve got the whole thing worked out, but then the winning detail turns out to be a fluke. That’s the case here, where a brief moment of jest provided exactly the “twist” I needed to really make this photo work.
Perhaps my favorite thing about photographing people while their heads are covered is that they can’t see anything. I think an initial novelty wears off after a few moments and the model realizes she won’t be able to see for a while. Once that happens, I have noticed that they become more expressive with their bodies, naturally compensating for their lack of facial expression.
I imagine something along the line of Ed Gein meets David Berkowitz. Unlike Bundy or Dahmer, whose murders had more of an obsessive sexual nature, Gein and Berkowitz were killing to appease some other personna — like the ritual killings of ancient tribes making sacrifices to their gods in hopes of bringing prosperity, or peace, or just a good season of crops. It’s the same kind of superstitious mythology that leads “medical professionals” to offer prayer to patients in their care. The same dogmatic ignorance that leaves human civilization arguing against itself over whether or not our pollution has caused global warming, even while counting down the days until some fictitious man will come back from the dead, riding out of the sky on a horse. Read that last sentence again, really slowly, and then wonder to yourself about the fact that there are real, living, breathing, intelligent people — lots of them — who actually believe this!