Above are styled and photographed by me. Below is a photograph of my inspiration, Photographer Unknown.

This has been my favourite shoot to work on so far – taking inspiration from 1930s hair & beauty gadgets. When researching further into Irrational Fear & Phobia, I found some images of 1930s-1940s beauty gadgets on the internet (See last image for reference). When looking at these images from a first glance I thought they were some kind of torture method rather than something a person would inflict on themselves out of choice. To me these gadgets looked like they were causing harm to the body however the purpose of them was to ‘improve’ a persons appearance. I looked at the way the wires attach to the hair or the head and how to me it looks like some kind of mechanical growth or something from an old horror movie. This all led me to thinking of a way I could create a photoshoot using this old and scary style and linking it in with my idea of irrational fear & phobia.

I had the idea of linking this shoot to ‘negative growths on the mind’ representing irrational fear & phobia. I had some trouble with organising this shoot as I had originally planned to do most of my work in the fashion communication photography studio with good lighting and a white backdrop, because of the recent global pandemic of the Covid-19 virus and the closure of university I have been unable to use any of these facilities. Although I was not able to use the studio I feel my photographs came out really well and I am very happy with them.

I made a makeshift studio in my small living room and used my house mate as my model, I had my other two house mates as helpers to hold up my models hair in sections so I could later photoshop the wires on which I had already taken photos of against the white wall. I used bright pops of colour on my models eyes and the blue satin hairdressers cape to modernise my shoot. I later edited the wires on and also experimented with changing it to black and white. I think the colours work well however the black & white images work much more with my current unnerving theme I have stuck by throughout my project so far.