The Bell Witch
My project is based on the story of the Bell Witch, a ghost legend from Appalachian folklore. John Bell and his family were farmers who moved to rural Tennessee in 1817, when the family started reporting cases of strange noises, voices whispering and singing, and knocking on the walls at odd hours of the night. The incidents quickly escalated into deafening shrieking at all hours and eventually physical violence, which is when the spirit seemed to develop a fixation on John Bell and his oldest daughter Betsy. The Witch would repeatedly slap Betsy, pull her hair, and leave scratches over her body, and when John started experiencing health problems the Witch would choke him, knock him to the ground, and hit him when he would have a seizure. After the three years of relentless abuse, John Bell became bedridden and died in 1820 with a vial of mysterious black liquid by him, and the family said the Witch’s voice could be heard the entire day loudly screaming about how she poisoned him.
I used multiple Library of Congress photos to depict the Bell family posed in front of their farm in a traditional wet plate style portrait but I wanted to include the Witch as a hidden cryptid accidentally caught on camera. I made my roommate dress in an old fashioned, spooky outfit to take photos of her posing in the woods, and then edited those images to give my Bell Witch eerie and uncanny features. I added lots of texture to the image and heavily distressed the edges to make it appear like a forgotten about or hidden photo.
Link to Library of Congress images:
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/fsa/8c00000/8c00400/8c00435u.tif
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/ppprs/00700/00720a.tif
The Bell Witch by Jessica Holler is a photo of a family of 8 standing outside of what we can assume is their home and farm. There is also a witch peeking out from the tree behind the family, watching them in what feels quite malicious and creepy. Its a black and white landscape photo mirroring the texture of an aged wet plate photo, with some extreme distress around the edges specifically. The distress, along with the figure watching the family, gives the photo a very eerie and aged feeling, possibly like it captured something it was not supposed to, and was then buried away for decades to come.
ReplyDeleteThis work illustrates a story about a family being watched/followed by an unrelenting witch or being. We see the big family holding each other, some smiling, some looking off to the left as if they were distracted by something out of the frame. Most every element is in focus, excluding the farmland in the background, which means the artist intentionally wanted the viewer to be able to see the figure in the back and all the details of it and surrounding it. The photo is also quite aged and worn, indicating that it is something that has probably been around for long, maybe even being passed down through generations of the family in the photo. This gives the photo a sense of importance, maybe that the family knew of this witch that was haunting them, and they wanted to warn/alert future generations of her.
The photo has a pretty long depth of field, with only the farmland and family just starting to get out of focus, but utilizes techniques to age the photo well. There is a solid amount of distress to the edges as well as different textures and dust specks on the photo itself. It has an accurate aspect ratio and is fully black and white, no sepia coloring. I think the photo could have incorporated more of a shallow depth of field, with the witch possibly being blurry in motion, as if she was moving towards the subjects in a way to haunt them. There are also some fairly bright highlights seen on the house and tree that almost draw my eye in to it first before looking at the family and other subject, so having some of those brights also appear in other places of the photo may help it become a little more homogenous.
After reading the concept and understanding the history/folklore the piece was inspired by, I feel like I correctly interpreted the meaning based on the context and the title, which also adds to the success of the piece. I really like how the artist shared a real legend and interpreted the story in their own way to make one composition as if this was really happening to this family, it gives the photo a whole other layer of meaning and history. I also like how the artist didn't just recreate a specific moment from the folklore, but instead composed their own image inspired by it. This shows the ability to dig deeper and go beyond just taking the easy route.
Overall the photo tells a unique story, that I was able to interpret from context within the photo. I think it has a lot of success when it comes to concept and use of textures and distress to make it appear aged. I think the masking on both the family and the witch was also done nicely, they feel proportionate to the environment and have clean edges, which helps them to feel more integrated in this reality. I think some areas could be brightened up and evened out throughout the piece, and maybe some more folds or scratched to add to the distress and expand on the feeling of generational inheritance, but thats really just picking at details because the composition was overall successful in its goal.