The Undying Widow, the Banshee Ghost, the Rasping Whisperer of the Midnight Halls…
The final image in the Portraits from a Distant Era series is one that heralds the next series we would do, Hauntings from a Distant Era, photographed in October 2019.
The subject is Birch House Immersive co-creator Lauren Fields, seen previously in Distant Era’s premiere Urban Fantasy series—she is one of my favorite artistic collaborators. Not only does Lauren create exciting and brilliant immersive work, but as part of Birch House Immersive she actively supports other artists by creating workshops and artist residencies—both in person and online—to help artists create and grow their own work. It can be a hard world out there for the artists: constant rejection, low pay, intense competition, multiple jobs, predatory producers, a constant hustle, limited access to healthcare, the petty jealousies and egos of artist frenemies… The list goes on. An artistic director in the community who offers a helping hand, a listening ear, and an authentic voice in support of fellow artists is a rare and special person indeed.
But aside from all those great qualities, Lauren is my go-to resource for all things spooky and macabre. I had photographed her as at least two or three different witch characters prior to the first Distant Era series, so it came as little surprise when Lauren arrived at the Portraits from a Distant Era series as a creepy banshee-like character in a dark veil.
Curation
When I had originally selected Lauren’s image for this series, I chose the one in the top row, center, in the gallery below. Something about the way the character was turned away from the viewer, the indistinct profile of the face beneath the veil, and the flexing fingers of the hand creeped me out. I chose that image as my selection for Lauren, put it out to the world, and moved on to the next subject’s portrait. But as the selections for the series continued to come together week to week, I was less and less satisfied with that image. All the other subjects in the series faced the viewer. Most of the other images in the series were warm in tone, while this image was a desaturated sepia tone that looked closer a nineteenth-century photograph than a painterly portrait. I considered whether that was ok, but it continued to bother me because it just didn’t feel right, and not in the fun, unsettling way evoked by the content—in retrospect it wasn’t the right pick for the series.
By the time I finished choosing and editing the rest of the images, it was nearly October, and I was thinking of doing a spooky series, also featuring Lauren. But that image was still bugging me. So I went back through the images and selected one that matched the posing style of the other portraits. I used a similar desaturated sepia look, but it felt much more like it belonged with the others. And yet, while technically part of the Portraits series, I tend to group it with the Hauntings series that followed immediately after.
The other looks in the gallery below show ways in which the veil distorted Lauren’s face in ways that made her character seem mysterious, strange, and unsettling.
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