Photographer transforms nightmares into art

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CARINA LINDER JIMENEZ

Thick drops of blood slowly trickle down a man’s mouth, falling in fat pearls onto his black business shoes. A woman reaches toward his face with a hand oozing with more blood, which she smudges onto his lips. The blood sticks easily, like syrup. He smirks, showing off yellow and red-stained teeth.

Producer Christine Lyon and a volunteer model are on the set of a zombie photo shoot, completing the finishing touches for make-up. Lyon has to walk around three bloody dismembered legs, two arms and three hands to apply fake blood to another model. [pullquote cite=”Shawna Mauchline” type=”right”]”There is a story within the image, something that gets under your skin and sticks with you long after you’ve seen it.”[/pullquote]

Photographer Danielle K L Anathema observes the scene with a smile.

“It isn’t like this at normal photo shoots,” she says. “Just mine.”

Anathema coins herself a genre photographer. Her genre: horror.

Since stepping into the spotlight in 2009, Anathema has been doing something few have done in the horror photography field. Anathema focuses on the emotion and story of a scene rather than on producing one scary moment. Each photo tells a story and represents a personalized aspect of the model to the point that it’s psychologically chilling.

“It isn’t just a bunch of blood splashed around and people screaming,” says Shawna Mauchline, also known as Voodoo Pixie, a volunteer zombie for the photo shoot. “A lot of the time there is a story within the image, something that gets under your skin and sticks with you long after you’ve seen it.”

Since childhood, Anathema has had vivid, often hyper-sexualized nightmares including demons, possessions, kidnappings, end-of-the-world scenarios and strange figures that would sometimes leave her sleepless for months. Each nightmare was a product of her own mind, not external factors, she says.

“I didn’t watch the news and I lived in a small town,” Anathema says. “I lived a sheltered life.”

The nightmares took a toll, sometimes to the point that she developed physical ailments.

“I was an extremely terrified child,” Anathema says.

Around the age of 11, Anathema had difficulty even making it through one night. At that point, she decided to conquer her fears and study her nightmares to find the beauty within them, she says.

In search of an outlet to reveal her terrors, Anathema turned to film photography because she was never much of a drawer, she says. Using her mom’s film camera, she soon began taking photos of Lyon, her younger sister. She started by taking shots similar to those for a mainstream fashion shoot, and then she would turn off all the lights and dress Lyon in all black, making her hold a flashlight and imitate death.

“It was beautiful and very cold,” Anathema says.

For the next decade, Lyon served as Anathema’s muse and only model.

Over time, Anathema began to perfect her method. She shot one of her favorite black-and-white film photos in her mom’s basement, where she poured chocolate syrup all over Lyon to represent blood, she says.

Slowly but surely, her plan to find the beauty within horror began to gain momentum, and by the time she was 16, she was passionate about horror.

Each time she created an image, her nightmares would subside a bit more.

“It was kind of a therapy,” Anathema says.

Although she began taking dark-themed photos when she was 12, Anathema didn’t start a career in genre-based photography until 2008. For more than seven years, she worked managerial corporate jobs.

“It sucked my soul,” Anathema says.

After moving to Vancouver, B.C., Anathema decided to pursue a career in digital photography and enrolled at Vancouver Institute of Media Arts.

For this project, Anathema is shooting a zombie scene for a client who writes zombie novels in Texas and is a fan of her work. Anathema’s work is viewed and distributed internationally, from Transylvania to Japan and back to Canada.

During photo shoots, Anathema stresses the importance of building a safe and intimate atmosphere so everyone involved in the process has a positive experience, she says.

“[Anathema] is relaxed but mindful,” Mauchline says. “She gives me a lot of room as a model to experiment and try what I think will look good, but will also give direction so that we get the shot we want.”

Sarah Elizabeth, make-up artist and season three contestant on the Syfy original series “Face Off,” is working on this shoot’s two main zombies, Kita Ono and another volunteer.

The models must receive extensive make-up as they will be the center focus of the photo shoot.

The make-up acts as a base, which Anathema will then work with in Photoshop.

“Photoshop helps me do things you can’t do in real life,” Anathema says. “At least things you shouldn’t be doing.”

After more than four hours of non-stop work using a variety of special techniques such as airbrushing and prosthetic make-up, the make-up artists are done.

The crew heads to the backyard to begin the photo shoot. Dismembered limbs are strategically placed throughout the backyard, and a neighbor looks on while holding a beer.

“I can’t wait to sit on my porch and watch you all eat each other,” the neighbor calls out.

Gripping latex intestines covered in blood, volunteer zombie Daniel Brad leans over the corpse of a headless, disemboweled mannequin that is missing a leg and an arm.

“Bigger eyes!” Lyon says. “We want to see the whites of your eyes.”

Mauchline bites into a latex muscle, and the camera clicks.