Final Destination: Tragic Asylum 9

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 9: Final Destination

Another Within Temptation song inspired this piece. It is a song about dying, and passing on to whatever lies beyond death. It is also an image about trying to turn away death, and to say quite simply, “Not Today.”

“I’m searching / I’m fighting for a way to get through / To turn it away / It’s waiting, always trying / I feel the hands of fate, they’re suffocating.”

This image isn’t a self portrait, but there’s considerations of my own mortality reflected in the underlying meaning; ironic as this documentation of this eventuality are now documented forever.

More About this image

Beth, and the Borrowed D80. This image did not require much work in post-processing, with the main thing obviously being the toning of the image. I believe I burnt and dodged the face to increase contrast and give the image some more drama.

If I were to revisit this, I would likely blur the face entirely to create more questions about the identity of the individual, and to comment on the great equaliser that death is to the ranks of society.

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