Lomography

The emotion of fear and how I learned to love it through photography.

Fear is a primal and interesting emotion. I have always had a deep fascination with fear. Horror films and novels terrified me as a young boy. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” really scared me. I was three when it came out, so by the time Freddy was hitting it big (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors”) I was in kindergarten. Horror, or anything related to it, freaked me out.

If we were in a movie store, I couldn’t walk in the horror isle. If I saw a photo of Freddy I was hysterical. Still, whenever me and my family went to Wal-Mart (in the 80’s, before it became the boogeyman it is today) I would repeatedly sneak peeks at the VHS cover for “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Even though it scared me, I was fascinated by it. I wanted to know more about the characters. Even Freddy and, especially, the girl named Nancy who battled with him.

A friend as Laurie Strode from John Carpenter’s “Halloween”.

My fascination consumed me. In school, using my homeroom as a setting, I would daydream about what I thought “Elm Street” dreams would be like.

In Florida it’s always sunny so I would imagine myself walking to the door that lead to the hallway outdoors where the morning sun was beaming down on the asphalt. The rest of my classmates (and my teacher) continued as if I wasn’t moving at all. I always saw myself opening the door, slowly, expecting the warm sunlight to hit me in the face as my teacher realized what I was doing and demanded that I sit down.

A creepy abandoned church in St. Petersburg, Florida.

But as I opened the door, something strange happened. The hallway was not sunny and warm. It was a darkened alleyway at night. Orange streetlights covered the dark roads, which were covered in puddles from a recent rain. Water dripped from the roof and onto my face. Despite the fact that my classroom was on the first floor, a rickety second story metal stairwell beckoned me down into the wet, dark alley way. I wanted to go down that alley, but I couldn’t. Freddy was done there and I knew I couldn’t face him alone. Quickly, I would shake myself back to reality.

I repeated this daydream until, one day, I decided that I needed to know how this girl from the VHS cover, Nancy, faced and defeated Freddy.

A friend poses as my hero Nancy Thompson from “A Nightmare on Elm Street”.

At age 11 I finally mustered the courage to watch “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. I learned who Nancy was. I learned that Freddy could be stopped. And I learned that I loved, loved, loved horror movies.

As I became a photographer, I naturally was obsessed with the idea of paying homages to my horror favorites. As I got better at handling the camera, I started creating horror themed photographs of my own.

A friend poses as Barbra from Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”.

Fear, like any other emotion, is best described through art, be it music (John Carpenter’s “Halloween” theme), performance (Marilyn Manson, Slayer, etc) and, of course, photography.
My quest to capture film has not ceased. If anything, it grows stronger the older I get. Like watching “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, taking fearful photos helps me conquer my own fears. I become just like Nancy (except I have more Y chromosomes and chest hair).

As 2012 comes around, I am going to be focusing on a lot of fear-tinged photographs. As German singer Nina Hagen says:

I’m hearing cosmic noises shatter in my ear/They say we’ve got two choices: one is Freedom, one is Fear

Here’s to Freedom in 2012!

My friends are vampires.

Pleasant Dreams!
-A

Note: This blog has nothing to do with the supposed “End of the World” in 2012. I do not subscribe to that theory. After all, the Mayans didn’t see their own extinction coming so how reliable can they be?