Joshua Hoffine

One of the first photographers i found that worked with Fears was the work of Joshua Hoffine. Joshua focuses on Horror photography based around the ideas and psycholo

gy of fears. While his work is very graphic its also very atmospheric and often features children in situations which are horrific. He plays on the ideas of childhood and fear, and wants to audience to empathyse with the children hin his images. 

He classes his work as horror photography, and while i understand the idea of horror in photography i never really thought as the genre in a sence of photography and often automatically jumped to the idea of video and film. Even art in a sence i seemed to skip over the idea of horror in art (which is something i want to look at later on anyway) Horror as an art often draws its strength from the subcontious which links in with Hoffines view of the link between horror and psychology and in his own words  'Horror photography is able to present these abstract and forgotten fears into literal terms'

While most of his images look fake and photoshopped Hoffine uses the directorial approach making each image like a movie set with SFX makeup, lighting and sets, and the actors are nearly always family members and friends, often using his daughters for the photographs. 

His imagery is very obvious and very straight forward, its not really subtle but then its trying to portray the realism that you experience as a child when your scared of something. He focuses on big fears such as fears of spiders, the death of a loved one ect. and often uses atmospheric lighting to help achieve the overall fear. The gore in some images are over the top and near on always the horrific person is played by adults. Maybe thats making a statement about the relationship between children and adults and there reactions to fear.

In comparison the children in the images are often overly innocent, in nightclothes or uniforms or even in nothing but underwear.  While the most gorey images are without children. 

His artists statement states: 

'I try to present the images within the visual grammer of the child. i want the viewer to empathize with the child, to share their point of view, to feal there vunerablity. the images stress danger and depict amoral world where purity and innocence are under constant threat. Like fairytales these photographs function as cautionary metaphors about the potential dangers of the world'

I really love the image set inside the keyhole, as in a child is looking in, or is locked inside a closet. Its amazing some of his images such as the bath scene and the detailing on it, while the childrens images are rather more  disterbing because of the child being present and instincs set in so that the audience want to protect the child.