What makes Jack the Ripper so compelling is that nothing is factually known about him. Because he was never caught, we have no information about who he was or why he committed his gruesome crimes. We do not possess a historical or biographical portrait, but instead share a communally imagined idea of Jack the Ripper as an aristocratic predator. As a boogeyman, he graphically symbolizes the idea of the wealthy preying on the poor.
For the brick alleyway, I decided to build a set. The walls were made from large sheets of styrofoam that I carved and sculpted to look like brick using a hot-knife and heat gun.
My cousins Steve Hoffine and Jerry Hoffine run a commercial haunted house called 3rd Street Asylum. They allowed me to build my set inside their creepy building.
The part of Jack the Ripper was played by Chad Hawks. He grew out his own muttonchops for the role, and flew in from Chicago to help me with my project.
The part of Jack’s victim was played by Celine Collins. She is the owner of Monkey Wrench Clothing. I had previously drafted her to make the elaborate costumes needed for this photograph. She was already busy doing the costume work when I asked her if she would be willing to play the part of the victim as well. She gave a marvelous performance.
We added a fake torso and silicone intestines for the gory scene in Part 2, and a lot of fake blood. In fact, everybody had such wet sticky hands from the fake blood that nobody on set took pictures. Which is too bad! It was a gruesome sight!
We built our set at the 3rd St. Asylum Haunted House in Bonner Springs, Kansas. My cousins Jerry and Steve Hoffine did all of the carpentry and construction.
Here you can see me talking with J. Anthony Kosar, who drove in from Chicago to lead the make-up team. Beside me is my assistant Demian Vela, and behind us is Colin Mogg, one of my zombie models.
Nothing captures the quintessential awkwardness of adolescence like the Prom photo. It is the final game of dress-up before entering the adult world.
Monsters are the perennial outsider. Did any of us ever feel more like monsters than we did as teenagers? The self-consciousness of adolescence comes with the realization that the villagers can turn on you at any moment.
There is a long-standing tradition of teenage monsters in the Horror genre, starting with I Was A Teenage Werewolf and I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, both from 1957. Modern variations on the teenage monster movie include Carrie, Teen Wolf, The Craft, even Twilight. Wes Craven’s Scream could easily have been titled I Was A Teenage Slasher.
My eldest daughter Arinna (from my photograph BABYSITTER) played the part of Frankenstein’s prom date. She also helped me cast my project, and recruited several of her friends to be models.
I photographed the kids in full costume on my set, complete with hand make-up. Kosar provided fake feet for teenage Wolfboy, played by Wyatt Zirkle. Wolfboy’s date was played by Fee Pauwels.
I photographed Kosar’s sculptures on the same set, under the same lighting, to ensure that both parts would fit together seamlessly when combined in Photoshop.
A special thank you to my sister Sarah who made all of the flower corsages. And a big thank you to Kevin Kinkead at Boomerang in Westport KC for giving me such a great deal on all of the retro clothes! And lastly, thank you to Margaret of London for inviting me to be part of this project.
This image is based on the 1931 story Shadow Over Innsmouth by legendary Horror author H.P. Lovecraft. This photograph stars actor Doug Jones (The Shape of Water, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) as the victim and features SPFX from J. Anthony Kosar and his talented team at Kosart Studios.
In the story Shadow Over Innsmouth, the human victim is chased through the streets of the seaside town of Innsmouth by a teeming mob of monstrous fish people called the Deep Ones. The image of a sole individual being pursued by a city full of monsters is similar to Invasion of The Body Snatchers, I Am Legend, or any modern zombie movie, but exists first in Shadow Over Innsmouth. As with my previous zombie photograph LAST STAND, INNSMOUTH is populated by a horde of monsters, not just one.
We staged the photo-shoot at Kosar’s studio in Chicago.
Staging the scene in deep focus with extreme foreground elements was inspired by my love for Citizen Kane. Giving the monsters daggers was inspired by the assassination scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. There are no daggers in the original story, but Lovecraft does make a point of describing the strange gold jewelry worn by the Deep Ones. I changed the gold jewelry into golden knives, so that my swarm of monsters could fish-gut their cornered victim.
We ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for this ambitious tribute to H.P. Lovecraft to help celebrate the 125th anniversary of his birth. Many talented people came together to assist me on this project.
My cousins Steve and Jerry Hoffine and Mike Clouse from the haunted house 3rd St. Asylum in Bonner Springs, Kansas built the walls in Jerry’s carpentry shop. They are all big men and accustomed to wearing masks for extended periods of time, so they also flew to Chicago to play the lead monsters in the photo-shoot.
My assistant Demian Vela transported me, all of my photo equipment, and the brick wall we created in a rented U-Haul trailer from Kansas City to J. Anthony Kosar’s studio in Chicago. He also plays one of the monsters in the photo.
Celine Collins at MonkeyWrench Clothing hand-made the costume for my star Doug Jones. I wanted him dressed as a white collar city dweller – an outsider – to contrast the blue collar mob of Innsmouth locals.
Doug Jones is famous to Horror fans for his roles in The Shape of Water, HellBoy 1 & 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CrimsonPeak, and many other movies. Here you can see my wife Jen Hoffine adjusting Doug’s sleeve on set. Everyone was elated to spend time with Doug.
Kosar created an army of monsters as pull-over masks and gloves. With my encouragement, he mixed elements of piranha, angler fish, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon into his designs. His collection of Deep Ones is amazing.
In addition to Demian, Kyle, and the Cousins, several other volunteers suited up to play monsters, including Justin Gardner, Mark Lancaster, Coye Vega, and Dan Dudych. Costumes and prop knives were loaned to us by Jerry Vest at Have Guns Will Rent in Kansas City.
I used several strobe lights to ensure my whole scene would be in focus at F/22, including a special battery-powered strobe inside the lantern. Thank you to photographer Barrett McGivney for the additional equipment, tech support, and behind-the-scenes photos.
A huge thank you to my Producer on this project Chad Hawks – pictured here in red on the far left – who worked harder than anybody to make this project a reality!
A tremendous heartfelt thank you to all of our Kickstarter supporters, especially our mega-backers Matthew & Dawn Cheek and family, and Alan Harris! And a big thank you to the leaders of the H.P. Lovecraft community who helped spread the word about our project – including Aaron Vanek and James Knouse at the HPLFF in Los Angeles, Neils Hobbs at NecronomiCon in Rhode Island, Brian & Gwen Callahan at CthulhuCon and the Arkham Bazaar and HPLFF in Portland, Tom Jenkins, Mike Davis at the HPL-Ezine, Chad & Chris at the HPL Literary Podcast, and Sean Branney & Andrew Leman at the HPL Historical Society. We could never have done this without you! Hail Cthulhu!
This is my recent photo project titled INNSMOUTH PORTRAITS.
I photographed 4 vintage portraits of the monstrous fish people created by J. Anthony Kosar and his team at Kosart Effects as a supplement to my new photograph titled INNSMOUTH. Because the story by H.P. Lovecraft Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931) describes generations of Innsmouth inhabitants going back decades, I decided to shoot the portraits as genuine wet plate photographs utilizing photo technology from the 1800’s.
This type of wet plate photography is like alchemy and utilizes dangerous chemicals. I recruited knowledgeable wet plate photographer Steve Wilson to come in and help. I worked for Steve Wilson at Hallmark Cards as a young photographer. He was an early important mentor and it was great to work with him again.
Steve used a powerful HMI light because wet plate has a very slow exposure time and requires a tremendous amount of light. I love the idea that some young man from Innsmouth participated in the Civil War as a Massachusetts resident.
After exposing a metal plate that he had prepared with a light-sensitive chemical coating, Steve would remove the plate from the camera and develop it in my kitchen while we watched.
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I began by acquiring the materials necessary to build a life-size Robot. I learned how to paint plastic objects so that they looked like metal. The body of the Robot was made from a baby bicycle seat and a diaper genie I found at a thrift store.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view. Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
I spent weeks rummaging through thrift stores and flea markets looking for potential body parts. I used pieces from Tonka trucks and golf carts, grape juice bottles, tripods, plastic plumbing elements, flashlights, toy lightsabers, and knitting needles. Rivets were made by spray painting ‘googly eyes’ and then glueing them onto the body.
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The head was made from an air humidifier, radio antennas, and different Star Wars ships pieced together. We placed a small LED flashlight inside the eye so that it would glow. It was important to me that my Robot have one red glowing eye like HAL in 2001.
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We used Fullers Earth to create the atmosphere of steam. Demian and I made a rig with an air compressor to blast it into the air. The texture of the Fullers Earth looked more like steam than the fog I usually use.
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After placing Bob into position, my only directions to him were to look as if he were in a state of religious ecstasy. I removed the puppet rods using Photoshop.
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I also used Photoshop to replace the yellow plastic syringes with actual glass containers of fluid. I did this separately so that I would be able to back-light the fluid and highlight the air bubbles inside.
The leg was made from a weedeater, a Star Wars lightsaber, part of a tripod, an old fishtank purifier, and bicycle sprockets. By this point I had run out of money, so I made only one leg and photographed it in four different positions. I added the four legs to the original photograph in Photoshop, completing the insect-like Robot design I was aiming for.
In 2018 Dark Regions Press published a hardbound collection of my Horror photographs.
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Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
12 x 12 inches | 190 pages | Color | English | 2018
The comprehensive volume spans 13 years of work and includes rare behind-the-scenes photos and artist commentary. A signed and numbered Deluxe Limited Edition version of the book was also released bound in leather with a dust jacket and black linen slipcase.
