Article by guestblogger Dario Carere
Joshua Hoffine‘s terrifying images drag us into a world of nightmares, hunting, danger, and they also contain a touch of irony and romance.
His first horror photographs, dating back to 2003, have consecrated him as the founder of a real sub-genre, which combines elements of literature and cinema to generate a new perspective for the photographic art; as he stated in an interview, unlike video games, music, etc., photography has never enjoyed a true horror conjugation before.
Hoffine’s monsters populate cellars, attics, bathrooms, all those places that are most familiar to us and that we consider safe; demons mock us from dark corners, as we try to figure out where they are. But above all, they can hide inside us.
Looking in the mirror we discover that we are only a grotesque copy of our own fears; beauty, as it often happens in romantic literature, is just the superficial layer for a corrupt and deformed soul. Nineteenth-century scenarios become the background for brutal crimes and surreal apparitions, through which Hoffine’s imagery produces silent and unprecedented stories, compressed in a single shot capable of throwing up a thousand questions.
As a lover of horror classics, Hoffine takes advantage of the immortal fame of icons such as Jack the Ripper, Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde, Nosferatu and Elizabeth Bathory (beautifully captured as she wears a beauty mask during her usual bath in a virgin’s blood), to revisit their spirit in a modern way, telling the story in one or more shots. Lighting, make-up and expressiveness are studied in detail to transform the image into a continuous exchange between reality and vision, which is why each picture is always something more than a simple “movie scene”. The moment he decides to immortalize is the perfect point of maximum dramatic tension.
The classics of horror are often represented in his work, as you can see in his recently published anthology, a collection that spans across his last thirteen years of work. The silent killer, Stephen King’s clown with his menacing balloon, the horde of ravenous zombies, the corpse bride: it’s a great tribute to the horror genre which, as intended by the author, by stabbing our imagination forces us to “see what we did not want to see“.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Hoffine has also ventured into taking the role of director in 2014, for his first short (yet very intense) film, Dark Lullaby.
https://vimeo.com/150959454
The protagonist of Dark Lulllaby is one of Hoffine’s daughters. Starting from his very first shots, dedicated to childhood nightmares, Hoffine has often immersed his daughters (along with other relatives) in the surreal scenarios he creates; these photographs, collected in his most famous work After Dark My Sweet, are still in my opinion the best of his vast production.
The reason is that they concern us closely: the monster under the bed, the spiders entering from the window, the jaws that seem to come out of the darkness of the closet — they all belong to the oldest memories each of us has, and sometimes even to our everyday adult life. These are primordial, indelible nightmares: darkness, insects and ghosts are three things that almost all of us fear, even when there’s really no reason, even when it might feel silly to be afraid.
Combining fantastic monsters and little girls is a way to create a terribly effective contrast, one that was always dear to the horror genre. However rich the artist’s imagination and the skill of the model/actor may be, no one can represent horror better than children. In truth, through horror, we always go back to childhood, reopening our trunk of memories we left in the attic, to return to that good old pavor nocturnus. This is why a child remains the perfect protagonist of any scary scene.
One wonders what kind of memory Hoffine’s five daughters will retain from this experience.
Of course, this master of horror should be credited with having created a new kind of photography, which through the excellent use of makeup is able to show us what we did not want to see.
Here is Joshua Hoffine’s official website.