Claustrophobia: Image Bank

Joshua Hoffine

A horror photographer, Hoffine creates scary photos. All of his images are staged, like a movie, and he only uses photoshop for small details. His full method can be found here. He grew up in Kansas fearing tornadoes and the monster under his bed.

I chose this image because he has juxtaposed something so widely feared with something so commonly protected, increasing the fear factor of the image since the child is seemingly defenseless. Yet interestingly enough the infant doesn't seem perturbed at all by the spider. The sepia tones also make the picture scarier.

Alexis Hunter

Alexis Hunter has been working as an artist through various mediums since the 1970s. Her artwork wrestles with her ideas about society and the role of women. She has been invited to do countless solo shows, as well as being displayed in various other places. Full biography here.

I chose this image because the woman seems constricted in her clothing, claustrophobic in her role. I like the composition, it's very eye-catching, and the fact that it's black and white can be interpreted to say a lot about the culture, most especially concerning Hunter's feminist ideals.

Yousuf Karsh Karsh was a photographer from Ontario famous for his portraits of famous people. He prided himself on getting the oul of a person in the image, which he said came from a split second where they briefly lift "the mask" that all humans conceal their true selves with. I chose this picture, a portrait of Georgia O'Keefe, because she seemed trapped in her environment, yet somehow free from it, as if she was transcending reality. For some reason the picture was calming. Picture Source

Claustrophobia: Theory Notes

Dictionary.com defines claustrophobia as "an abnormal fear of being in enclosed or narrow places." I tried to convey this with my photographs.

Since claustophobia is a fear of small spaces, I wanted to have intimate yet intimidating close-ups of a seemingly scared model, as if through the eyes of a perpetrator of some sort. I wanted to try and violate a visual comfort zone. I did so by taking picture of different, rather disjointed areas of her body in the same position, as if the viewer is looking her up and down, examining her fear.

For the final print, in which she is in a different pose, I wanted an attempted escape, breaking the pattern created by the intimidated look in the previous images.

Claustrophobia: Printing Compositions

This is the contact sheet I made for this project. I used the 4 circled images. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 seconds For my 1st print, I tried a test strip to make sure the contact sheet settings were the best. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50-70 seconds (10 second intervals)

But after I did the contact sheet I realized there was a lot of contrast so I needed to do an A4 print to make sure everything was ok. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 seconds

Then I decided the contrast was good, so I did a full print. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 seconds

Then I decided the settings were good for the rest of the prints, so I did another one at the same settings. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 seconds I then did another print at the same settings. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 secondsFor the 4th print I figured it was best to do a test strip first just to make sure the same settings were still good for this print. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 secondsThen I did a full print at that time. Aperture: 4 Filter: 0 Time: 50 seconds

Claustrophobia: Diary Entry

I think that this project is the best one I've done so far. I'm very proud of the composition of my shots, and I think they make a nice series. I can really only think of one setback, that I couldn't find my test strips one day, but that all turned out to work in my favor. INstead of using the settings I had for the previous test strip, I did another one and ended up doing a final print almost immediately, and then continued to do all of my prints at the same settings, which happened to be the settings for my contact sheet. One setback I had was that I thought I had finished the project with 3 images and at the beginning of the next class found out I needed 4, but I managed to get a print fairly quickly using the same settings and that flowed well with my series. Another frustrating event towards the beginning of my project was not being able to use the one print I was most proud of. It was too dark, but if I lightened it up it removed the effect of the picture, so I had to give up and work on other prints, but this worked out because then I ended up with a good series.

This is the print I made that I didn't end up using.