This photograph was taken by Gary Hoffman on September, 14th 2013 at the Rock Creek Churchyard and Cemetery here in Washington, DC. Hoffman, a Washington DC artist, is well known for his uncanny and bewitching photographs. Indeed, this image creates the illusion that the statue is is motion, coming forward in space, and is crying or perhaps bleeding. Hoffman achieved this ominous, ghost-like effect by simply changing the color settings of his camera. He focuses on the commonness of his surroundings and frames his shots carefully, creating extraordinarily mesmeric narratives.
While this photograph has not been superimposed with ghostly images, such as those we read about in this weeks essays, Hoffman successfully achieves this ghostly quality by creating a dramatic and unsettling image, with a dissonance that both repels and attracts us; it is undoubtedly related to what scares us, what makes us feel uncomfortable. In truth, what strikes me the most about this image is its ambiguity, its ability to arouse feelings of uneasiness, darkness and solitude.
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