Joshua Hoffine

Joshua Hoffine born in Empoia Kansas in 1973. After graduating Kansas City high school in 971, Hoffine began making photographs. He studied with the commercial photographer Nick Vedos and later worked as a photo-assistant at Hallmark Cards before becoming a freelance photographer.

Joshua Hoffine began making ‘Horror Photographs’ in 2003. Hoffine worked on his Horror photography for years in private; working as a wedding photographer and producing CD covers to support his young family. His Horror photography took off on the internet in 2008 when he released his photographs exploring childhood fears. Since releasing his work online his work has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and news outlets around the world. He has cultivated a massive cult following for his meticulously staged photographic works. Other horror photographers have emerged after Hoffine's success, inspired by the work that he's created.

Joshua Hoffine photographs the young childhood fears, such as the fear of a monster hiding under the bed, the fear of clowns and the fear of monsters under the stairs, hiding. Hoffine also captures the unconscious fears that lay within an adults mind, such as the image on the left, which is the unconscious fear of being murdered. Hoffine stages his work to capture these fears. Hoffine stages his photo shoots like a movie set, using costumes, sets, elaborate props, fog machines and special effects make-up; this is to create the most lifelike and realistic shots. For the actors involved in his shoots he uses his family members, friends and even his own daughters.

Hoffine states that he is ‘interested in the psychology of fear’, how fears of people slowly become less and less on a person’s mind and becomes an unconscious fear, still there just hidden. His work is to explore these unconscious fears, these fears that have been suppressed and forgotten about.

I used Joshua Hoffine’s website (http://www.joshuahoffine.com/) to find the information needed for my research.


Danielle Tunstall

Danielle Tunstall is a much unknown artist, who shoots within the same theme as Joshua Hoffine capturing horror photographs.Unlike Joshua Hoffine, Danielle doesn't use staged settings for shoots, she mainly uses photo manipulation software such as Photoshop to change the look of people and create horror like images; such as the image on the right which is a part of Danielles Zombie Land work.

Danielle states on her blog, 'I don't do my work to shock or gore for gores sake, I'm simply making visual comments on life and the human species. The evening news is far more upsetting than anything I could ever produce - and that is fact. My work is purely fiction based on reality' she compares the work she produces to the reality of life, saying that the evening news is far more upsetting than anything she could ever produce.

Danielle shoots mainly within the studio to create her work, she says she uses a studio because she likes the plain background as the background doesn't distract the audience from the subject within the shot.

Some of the work Danielle produces is used for commercial work, being sold to be used as anything, but have been sold for book covers. Danielle's work has featured within photography magazines such as 'Digital SLR Photography'. 






Films

I have looked at two films, ‘Drag me to Hell’ directed by Sam Raimi and ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ directed by Drew Goddard. The reason for me looking at these two films is to inspire me and give me ideas for my project. I chose these two films in particular because they are two films that are of the unrealistic fantasy horror genre.

Drew Goddard’s ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ is a story about five friends who take a trip to a remote cabin which is then to be the terrifying setting of brutal murders by some childhood monsters.  The main monsters in this film is the living dead (zombies), they’re portrayed as slow moving but deadly creatures. This film is inspiration for my project as it contains unrealistic monsters made with movie techniques of stages settings, special effects make up, costumes and elaborated props; the same techniques used by Joshua Hoffine to capture his 'horror photographs'.


'Drag me to Hell' by Sam Raimi  is a similar genre of film to 'Cabin in the Woods', being a fantasy horror. The film contains unrealistic moments which are meant to resemble 'hell'. I chose to look at this film for inspiration as it contains horror fantasy which I plan to produce a project around; the film can also be seen as a nightmare due to the hell that's involved within the film.