Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Cold And Dark


Simon Marsden is one of my favorite photographers. He shoots gothic scenes on infrared film, which gives an ethereal, almost ghost-like glow to his images. Green vegetation is alive with IR and prints as soft-white, while the deep blacks of cold stone and sky appear crushed-down and dramatic. He often constricts the view with vignetting, inciting claustrophobia.

Truly haunting.

He travels around Europe and photographs old castles and statues and manor houses and ruins where ghost legends abound. This kind of photography requires vision, planning, and a laser-like focus on the mood that the final image will convey. I think Simon succeeds very well in this, his images are horrifyingly effective at telling ghost stories without a single word.

2 comments:

lindsay said...

Very cool. We saw many a castle or remnant of a castle in Ireland that would make an excellent subject for something like this!

wildmary said...

I'm not so sure. If my castle pics turned out like this I would wonder what I did wrong.