The Wailing Widow

I don't normally do horror type shoots, not that I don't like them, but they do fall outside the mythology that underlies everything I do (it's long and complicated so I won't go into just what that mythology is) although that's not the real reason I don't do them. I don't do them, because they're really fucking hard to effectively pull off.

I've written and re-written this too many times trying to make it concise and simple, but I really can't. So I'll just try this, for me horror is about setting a scene, it's about angles and lighting and the right environment, the right pose - if any of these are off, it doesn't work (again, at least that's how it works for me). So keeping that in mind it's much less fun of a process than my usual shoots and it becomes work, sometimes stressful and frustrating work.

However, this last shoot, which I'm calling the Wailing Widow turned out much easier than I had expected. I think because I warned the model that it might not be fun but actual hard work. However, after a few set up shots (in order to make her look like she was floating) it went really smoothly. I think because the makeup itself was pretty creepy and processing the shots in a high contrast black and white really helped. A lot of the pictures were cool, but once I processed them, they looked amazing - doesn't always happen, but it's so awesome when it does.

The makeup and character was heavily inspired by the MMO The Secret World, there's a couple characters that it comes close to looking it and I plan on doing a few more inspired by that game.

The story behind the Wailing Widow is that of an undead widow. While living she lived an opulent life with her husband in a mansion on a clifftop over looking the sea during the 18th century. He ran a fleet of ships that imported and exported goods around the world and would often be gone for up to a year at a time. Eventually there came a time when he simply never returned home and his wife, having already fallen ill, began a slow decent into madness as the years went by.

She would sit and wait for her husband to return every night while the house staff slowly plotted against her, growing frustrated as the money began to run out and resorting to slowly stealing everything in the house.

Finally, penniless and living in a massive empty house, she wandered the halls in sorrow until she finally died. It was some time before her body was even found.

She continues to haunt the hallways of the house on the clifftop where she once lived, assuming any who enter to be more thieves looking to steal from her.