From the Vault: Hair by Barrie

Hair by Barrie, a photo by Angela N. Hunt on Flickr.

And here’s Barrie doing the same job we just saw on Joanna, but nearly twenty years ago, on the second shoot I ever did with the Mad Model.

Yeah.

That’s a long time.

At the time, I didn’t know that spooky girl in graveyard was a trope, and to be honest, I’m glad I didn’t, because I did what I did and there are some truly beautiful shots amongst the crap.

Which is the lesson.

Just because there’s a lot of spooky girl in graveyard shots out there, doesn’t mean *you* can’t take spooky girl in graveyard shots. If you’ve got an idea, do it.

Who the fuck gives a shit if someone else has done it before?

It won’t be the way *you* do it.

Originally published at ANGELA N. HUNT. You can comment here or there.

From the Vault: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher, a photo by Angela N. Hunt on Flickr.

So the mausoleum behind the Mad Model here is in a turn of the century (that’s 19th to 20th century) graveyard in Piedmont, CA. Most of San Francisco’s famous dead were buried there, since the City itself had no room for the Dead. If you die in SF to this day, you don’t get buried there. Closest is Colma, directly to the south on the Peninsula, where there also happens to be a large military cemetery. If Colma is the City of the Dead, Piedmont’s little piece is the Bel Air of the Dead (i.e. high-end rent).

No one gets buried there anymore. It’s starting to fall apart and is decrepit and yet, it’s one of the few places I’ve been where I’ve been struck by the absolute peace and beauty of mortuary art.

We don’t do that anymore. It’s all flat stones in the ground or plain marble markers. The occasional repetitive motif on a marble wall plaque for those interred or memorialized of either hearts or flowers or crosses or stars.

We make no peace with Death or the Dead.

It’s not a good thing.

After all, She’s always waiting.

Anyway, not that this has that much to do with the Poe story, but when I looked at it, that’s what it wanted to be called. It’s pretty noisy (that’s a technical term) and I’m probably going to tweak it more to see if I can get more noise reduction, but in the meantime, it works.

Originally published at ANGELA N. HUNT. You can comment here or there.