Beyond the Veil: Tragic Asylum 3

Steven Perdikis

Context and Background

The year is 2007. I’m in my second year of University. I am studying an Undergraduate Degree in Visual Art, and I’m taking a digital photography class. I am tasked with making a photo book. The theme is portraiture. These are those images.

An essay should accompany this body of work, I’m told. There should be a theme that ties it all together. I have no idea what, or who to use as a portrait subject; other than those surrounding me in my class. I’m interested in the imagery evoked by an enormous cohort of “Gothic Metal”, and I use this as my basis, with my visual style leading more to Romanticism than Goya.

As we’ll see throughout this series of images, however; there’s a bit of obvious darkness throughout! Each image is inspired by a single song.

Image 3: Beyond the Veil

The band Tristania – a much heavier, more elaborate, and more “gothic”, in the sense of its grandeur inspired this image, which is a fairly literal interpretation of the title of the song.

It is a image about death, about mourning, and of implied beauty; yet, was ironically shot on an incredibly sunny day. Key lines from the song that gave this image substance and meaning: “Cross my heart with a glance upon the star of riddance / Drift afar like teardrops on the Stygian River.”

More About this image

This was shot on a Fuji DSLR, in full sunlight, with a faulty light meter. The light meter continued to treat the scene and sequence of image as though it was bracketed, even though this setting was disabled on the camera.

As a result, only every third exposure was usable. I was very lucky to salvage this image out of that calamity, but lucky for me, the model, Anthea – a friend was very understanding of the situation, and very patient to ensure that we were going to capture the right shot before giving up and leaving empty handed.

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