Filmic Influences- Similar to Guido Mocafico drawing inspiration from another medium I have chosen instead to take influence from two films I have recently seen- Dead Silence and The Possession.
Dead Silence- A widower who returns to his hometown to unearth clues about his recently departed wife's untimely death. In the quiet town of Ravens Fair, children taunt one another with spooky stories about a ventriloquist whose mind was ravaged by insanity. Mary Shaw was a popular entertainer until she was accused of murdering a young boy. Subsequently hunted and captured by the vengeful townspeople, Mary's tongue was cut out before she was mercilessly killed and committed to the earth in the company of her handmade collection of vaudeville dolls. In the years that followed, the town seemed to be haunted by those ghastly puppets. After mysteriously disappearing from Mary's grave, the menacing figurines would sometimes be glimpsed by the damned in the dead of night -- their appearance consistently foreshadowing the death of whoever laid eyes upon them. Entire families were found slaughtered, their tongues brutally torn from their mouths in a sickening scene that eerily recalled the execution of the elderly ventriloquist. Newlyweds Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) and Lisa Ashen (Laura Regan) both grew up in Ravens Fair. Now, following Lisa's inexplicable death, Paul has returned to the pair's hometown in order to say his final goodbyes and find out the truth about his wife's enigmatic demise. After being reunited with his ailing father (Bob Gunton) and the aging man's pretty young bride (Amber Valletta), the grieving widower will finally uncover the shocking truth behind the curse that has plagued Ravens Fair for as far back as he can remember.
Plot Summary taken from- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dead_silence/
The Possession- The Possession is the terrifying account of how one family must unite in order to survive the wrath of an unspeakable evil. Clyde and Stephanie Brenek see little cause for alarm when their youngest daughter Em becomes oddly obsessed with an antique wooden box she purchased at a yard sale. But as Em's behavior becomes increasingly erratic, the couple fears the presence of a malevolent force in their midst, only to discover that the box was built to contain a dibbuk, a dislocated spirit that inhabits and ultimately devours its human host.
Plot Summary taken from- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_possession/
The highlighted red lines are elements from the films that I would like to integrate into the narrative of my photographs. I will combine the use of a eerie and haunting presence of a porcelain doll, their chilling and glazed stare, with the foreboding placement of a wooden box to construct a narrative that is simple and clear.
Contextual Research found within September 2012's issue of British Journal of Photography discusses the fashion work of Paulina Surys as she suggests that her "process completely contradicts the initial goal of photography- it destroys the initial photograph and turns it into something else. The composition is created when I shoot the black-and-white image, but then it receives multiple elements that break this composition. It's something else, which comes from the photographer's mind- just like a painter with his paintings." This passage was relevant and intriguing to me as a comment on how her work is breaking with the codes and traditions to which which photography and photographs should follow, drawing upon other mediums and a collaboration of sorts takes place with these in order to create a piece of unique work. Whilst the exploration of this for both Surys and a variety of other photographers has been almost safe as they 'bridge' the supposed 'gap' between painters and photographers, and the respective mediums, with the pictorialism movement. I, however, have chosen to further disrupt the composition of these separate mediums by also taking ideas from filmic sources in a manner that is a hybrid almost of constructed cinematic imagery and piscatorial photography.
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