Upper School Art Gallery

The Lady from the Dead
Black and White Silver Print

We went to a graveyard for a photo shoot one day, a sunny day, no clouds, warm, and clear. The photographs I took there were not for an assignment, but for experience, so, for the experience, I took all of the best photos I could. This lady who is standing over the grave of a certain Fred A. George, had the sky and trees behind her, looking like a guardian over the dead. A few weeks later, we were asked to use any photograph we wanted to make a print using solarization, which reverses the tones and gives the objects in the photograph an outlining effect. I immediately went to my graveyard shots and chose to use this photograph. I felt that with the reversal of tones and the outlines the lady would look like a ghost, or a 'walking dead'. I was exactly right. In my mind, the lady in the photograph, now The Lady from the Dead actually looked like she had some spiritual grace to her in the middle of a ghostly surrounding.

Ben Kessler's Portfolio