The Truth Beneath the Rose: Tragic Asylum 5

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 5: The Truth Beneath the Rose

I listened to a lot of Within Temptation while studying. Their themes of betrayal, and almost combative, anthem like music painted incredibly vivid images in my mind. This image is my attempt at extracting that image in my mind and crudely rendering it in a photo manipulation.

“Blinded by the cruelty of the beast / It is the darker side of me / The veil of my dreams decieved all I have seen / Forgive me for what I have been.”

This is an image about duality, reflection and purgatory “I’m hoping, I’m praying / I won’t get lost between two worlds / For I have seen the truth lies in between.”

It is an image about passing on, passing through, and coming back from that journey. The “shadow” or “spectre” to the side of the model is meant to reflect this.

More About this image

I feel as though this is probably the “weakest” image of the series – while I think I’ve pulled off the etherality I was going for, the specture looks a little bit too Cthulhu-esque, and is out of step with the remainder of the series.

This is heavily modified in Photoshop, and was probably the image I spent the most amount of time on – for the poorest result – a good lesson in coming to know to stop when something is done.

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