:: Joshua Hoffine ((Horror Phoography)) ::
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Gracias al buen Sanche por el aporte.
Este tipo de arte me gusta mucho. No es que muy en el fondo sea un psicópata asesino y tenga deseos compulsivos de matar (o si???). Pero las cosas que hace este tipo me fascinan. En su blog puedes ver el proceso de creación de cada foto y te da una idea del laborioso trabajo que lleva hacer una sola toma.
De FeaturShoot.com tomo el siguiente fragmento de Bios y una pequeña entrevistita…
El Blog es el siguiente: http://joshuahoffine.wordpress.com/
Joshua Hoffine was born in Emporia Kansas in 1973. He graduated from KSU in 1995 with a degree in English Literature and moved to Kansas City where he started taking photographs shortly afterwards. Early in his career, before making Horror the principal subject of his photography, he worked for Hallmark Cards and ran a wedding photography business. Funny, but true.
What’s your process once you come up with an idea?
‘I have a small journal where I write down my concepts. It can be years before a concept goes into actual production. Once I start production, I spend time location scouting, gathering props and furniture, designing my monster, and sometimes building and painting a set. During this time, I determine who is going to be in the shot, and which of my friends to draft as crew’.
This is my new Horror photograph, called BABYSITTER.
My friend Bob Barber, who played the title role in DEVIL, returned to play the part of the homicidal lunatic escaped from a mental hospital.
My friend Patricia Castillo came in to apply Bob’s make-up. I met Patricia a couple of years ago on a commerical shoot for the rapper Prozak. I told her that I wanted a big gnarly lobotomy scar on the side of his head, held shut with metal staples.
She exaggerated the lines in Bob’s face, and whitened his skin until he was wraithlike and ashen, like a person who hadn’t seen sunlight in years.
She also added bruising and lacerations to his wrists for the broken handcuffs.
My friend Demian Vela was on hand once again to help me with the lighting.
My regular cohort Matt Tady helped me as well.
This photograph marks the debut of my eldest daughter Arinna, who plays the part of the babysitter. Arinna is 13 years old, and an amazing girl. She is charming, precocious, exceedingly bright, and a natural leader.
Arinna was a frequent model during my early years as a photographer. When I began making Horror photographs, it was her younger and more vulnerable sister Shiva that I used as my main model. As Shiva grew older, the role went to their younger sister Chloe. Arinna has always helped me behind the scenes, but this is the first time she has played a victim in one of my photographs.
The baby in the photograph is my niece Thea, who was also the baby in my photograph SNAKE.
The concept of the escaped lunatic appears in at least three of my favorite Horror films: BLACK XMAS, HALLOWEEN, and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. There is something very vulnerable about the teenage babysitter – no longer a child, but not yet an adult – attempting to shoulder grown-up responsibilities.
Ultimately though, this photograph focuses on just one thing – what if something awful was waiting for you right around the corner?
Lady Bathory
September 3, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
This is my new photograph LADY BATHORY, which had it’s debut at the gigantic Rue Morgue Festival of Fear in Toronto last weekend.
Lady Elizabeth Bathory was an actual person. She was a Hungarian countess in the 16th century, and one of the most prolific serial killers in history. Apocryphally, she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth and beauty.
The story of Lady Bathory serves as a cautionary tale on the dangers of vanity, and comments on the current preoccupation with youth and beauty in our contemporary society – from the mainstreaming of plastic surgery and botox injections, to body waxing and even piercing and tattoos.
I wanted to create a contemporary version of the Lady Bathory legend. In my photograph, the bloodletting is depicted as a kind of spa treatment, with Lady Bathory wearing a green mud mask and cucumbers on her eyes.
This image began as a commission from my friend Timothy Haskell for his Nightmare Haunted House in NYC. LADY BATHORY will actually be recreated as an installation in the haunted house itself.
This photograph was staged at The Foundation, a wonderful architectural salvage business in the West Bottoms of Kansas City. Patrick, the owner, donated an antique bathtub to use, and made this image possible by allowing us to build our large set in his space.
My beautiful girlfriend Strychnine Jen played the part of Lady Bathory. She was also an active member of my production crew, and spearheaded the enormous task of painting and scraping the dried blood grout lines on 2,420 pieces of white tile.
My friends and regular crew members Matt Tady and Demian Vela helped erect the walls of my set.
Here you can see Jen relaxing in the bathtub as I position the overhead light.
The more difficult role of Lady Bathory’s virginal victim was played by my friend Andee Hindery. Andee owns a business called AstroCakes, which is a Kansas City bakery dedicated to vegan sweets. She is also an aerial fabric acrobat, and the only friend I have that could physically handle being hogtied and suspended from the ceiling. Andee’s roommate Rachel, also an acrobat (and a dominatrix), came in to teach us the complicated knots necessary to suspend Andee.
Here you can see Matt and Demian trying to figure out how to hoist Andee into position.
Once Andee was in position, we quickly brought in Jen and began shooting.
Although we had made a rig out of surgical tubing and an air compressor to pump blood through Andee’s slashed throat (a latex appliance), it failed to deliver the geyser of blood I wanted, so I decided to shoot the blood separately.
Here you can see Jen hard at work mixing gallons and gallons of fake blood. We got the recipe from a special feature on the movie SLITHER: dark Karo syrup, Hershey’s chocolate, and red food coloring.
I taped a mark on the tile wall to show where Andee’s neck had been, and then had Demian and Matt pour blood in countless different ways, trying to get the perfect blood pour.
Because the blood was photographed on my actual set, the lighting and the focus were a perfect match, so it was relatively easy to combine the frames in Photoshop. Although I admit, cutting it out took me a long, long time.
Next month I’ll be releasing something really scary – my new photograph BABYSITTER! Come back in October to check it out!
Quo Magazine and Decibel Magazine
August 5, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
This last month my work was featured in two radically different publications.
One was Quo Magazine, a science magazine from Spain that published an article about my work in conjunction with a study on childhood fears.
If you can read spanish, it’s fun to check out their interpretations of my images, which you can find on their website.
The other publication to feature my work was Decibel, a heavy metal magazine.
You can find my interview with Jeanne Fury from Decibel on their website.
Thanks Jeanne!
$20 Print for August
August 4, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
For the month of August, I am offering $20 prints through my website of my photograph SWARM.
This image is part of my series based on childhood fears. I made a small set in my basement out of a mattress and covered it in dirt and leaves. The dead mother/witch figure was played by my friend Zoe. I asked Zoe to play the part because of her pronounced cheekbones. Her vintage nightgown came from an antique mall. I used flour to further whiten her hair, and Halloween crackle make-up for her skin. Her fingernails were made from Lee press-on nails, rubber cement, and a black sharpie. I could not afford real special FX contact lenses, so I lightened her already blue eyes in Photoshop.
The spiders are black plastic spiders that I found at the Halloween Superstore. My friend Felix and I spent over an hour going through the spider barrel, picking out the very best ones and placing them in a separate pile. The teenage employees at the Halloween Superstore thought we were crazy.
The baby in the photograph is my nephew Matt. I gained permission from my pregnant sister Sarah to use him in this shot months before he was even born. Zoe waited on set while Sarah walked Matt to sleep. He slept in Zoe’s arms throughout the entire photo shoot.
$20 Print for July
July 1, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
For the month of July I am offering $20 prints of my photograph entitled UNCLE SAM.
This image was meant to be a kind of murder mystery, a crime scene where the police have discovered the dead body of Uncle Sam in the woods. Who killed America?
I wrote the concept for this image during George W.’s first term as president. Given our current economic crisis, this image still strikes me as strangely relevant.
Uncle Sam was played by my brother-in-law Tom Beggs, who also played the monster in FACE. The police are made up of different friends. One of the officers is my frequent cohort Jason Coale. The detective collecting evidence is Ry Brown, a local filmmaker. The lead detective in the trench coat is actually my accountant Bryson Roberts.
We shot this image in a thatch of woods that Tom uses for deer hunting. My best friend and fellow photographer Kevin Sisemore helped me carry a heavy generator into the woods so that I could set up my strobe lights and fog machine. Almost as soon as we had everything set up it started to rain. As a result, this was an extremely short photo shoot. I had shot maybe 10 frames before being forced into a hasty retreat.
$20 Print For June
June 3, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
For the month of June, I will be offering a $20 print of the photograph titled BED through my website. The idea of a monster hiding under your bed is perhaps the most emblematic of all childhood fears.
The little girl in the photograph is played by my daughter Shiva.
The monstrous arms emerging from under the bed are from a giant Creature Reachers Halloween costume that I bought on sale the day after Halloween.
Hidden in the blocks on the floor are the words ‘DADDY’ and ‘NO’. This was meant to suggest that the real monster was in fact the little girl’s father.
This image was shot in my friend Joel Kraft’s living room. Joel is a musician and songwriter. He has a gentle and beatific personality that would have made him very successful as a hired musician for children’s parties. Before moving away to Portland, Joel was one of my most active collaborators. It is Joel (and his human hand) crawling down the stairs in WOLF. That’s Joel playing the boogeyman in REFRIGERATOR. And CANDY was photographed in his backyard.
SNAKE
May 4, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
Hey kiddies! This is my new Horror photograph, called SNAKE. This will be my $20 print for the month of May.
This photograph was shot on a set I made in my friend Mikal’s living room. The snake is a giant foam and latex prop. The baby is my little niece Thea.
The snake is 16 feet long, and was donated to me by my friends at Fright Catalog. When the snake arrived in the mail, it was painted with a traditional boa constrictor pattern. I took the snake to my friend Chico to see if he would be willing to repaint it in a more stylized manner. Chico is a local art star in my hometown of Kansas City. He specializes in zombie paintings. I am a big fan of his work, and spend most Monday nights at his studio watching obscure Horror films with him and his friends.
I asked Chico for his opinion on how we might re-stylize the snake. I told him that it should reflect the mind of a child. He suggested we repaint the snake as a giant argyle sock. I swooned with the brilliance of this suggestion and told him to do it.
I returned to Chico’s studio a couple of weeks later, and the snake was completely repainted in black and white, as you now see it in the photograph. Chico had intended to add another layer of color and texture, to make the snake more believable. I stopped him, though. I loved the crisp black and white because It completely reminded me of Tim Burton.
I added to the snake a pink tongue that I made out of sculpey and a wire hanger, and a pair of sawed-off deer antlers as fangs.
The snake had a wire armature built inside. I positioned the snake so that it’s body would mime the symbol for Eternity. The shadow of the snake on the floor was meant to suggest an Ouroboros, the ancient symbol depicting a serpent swallowing it’s own tail and forming a circle.
Now a lot of you are wondering what the hell did I do to that baby to get her to cry like that? The truth is: nothing at all. In fact, getting my happy niece Thea to cry was the hardest part of the shoot. She was having a ball pushing herself across the polished floor of my set. Every few seconds I had to jump up from behind the camera to reposition her. My sister Becky – Thea’s mom – was there for the shoot. After 45 minutes Thea was still cooing and playing on the floor. Becky left the room to call her husband (and my best friend) Felix to tell him the shoot was running long. Becky leaving the room finally put a dent in Thea’s sunny disposition. Becky came back into the room just as Thea was beginning to cry for her. Becky said I had 10 seconds to get my shot. I started to shoot like crazy as Becky counted out loud. As soon as she said “ten”, she swooped in and grabbed Thea. And that was it. Thea stopped crying, Becky was relieved, and I had my shot.
I want to thank my friend Matt Tady for helping me build and paint my set. The vent and the Welcome sign over it are my favorite details.
I want to thank my friend Damien Vela for helping me on the day of the shoot.
And I especially want to thank my friend and fellow photographer Peter Obetz for loaning me his camera and laptop to shoot this image.
The next image I’m working on is called BABYSITTER. My 13 year old daughter Arinna will be playing the babysitter, and Thea will be the baby. My friend Bob Barber, who recently played the part of the Devil for me, has been cast in the role of the escaped lunatic. Should be cool.
$20 Print For April
April 1, 2009 by Joshua Hoffine
For the month of April, I will be offering a $20 print of a photograph called MIRROR. You can buy this print through my website.
MIRROR is one of the very first Horror photographs I ever made. My friend Phil is playing the monster. I chose him because of his thin frame and articulated spine. The bathroom was a location I discovered in a condemned home. The electricity was still on in the house, but the heat was turned off. It was cold enough in that bathroom to see your breath. Phil was a real trooper.
The monster’s face is made up of two different halloween masks: one for the exaggerated brow, and one for the giant mouth. I cut the two masks apart and stapled what I needed together. The seam was hidden by the gauze I wrapped around his head. I aged the gauze, and exaggerated his eye sockets with make-up.
I replaced the bulb in the existing light fixture with a 200 watt bulb and used it as my main light source. I used two 500 watt hot lights on dimmer switches to bounce off of the ceiling as fill light.
I added all of the weird jars of brackish fluid and prescription pill bottles to the cabinet shelves. The crazy starfish on the wall, however, were already there.
que buen rollo de imagen!!!