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photography

PHOTOS: The Phantom Zone

A distorted, warped image of a smiling person with braces on their teeth, from a poster in the street.

“As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the portrait is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed, whoever possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence over the original of it.”

James Frazer, The Golden Bough

A poster which has faded and cracked so that the young woman in the image looks as if her head has been opened like a boiled egg.
A close up of a shop fascia which has warped and cracked in the sun so that the woman on the image has blank, black eyes and a distorted, mad smile.
A shop fascia which has cracked and distorted so that the face of a woman can just be discerned in the warped vinyl. She appears to be screaming or crying out.

“One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord – the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream.”

Edvard Munch, diary entry

A ripped, faded poster which appears to show someone singing, only now their eyes are blank and it looks more like they're screaming.
A poster outside a pub which is supposed to show a football fan cheering on his team but his mouth is open wide and fixed in what looks like a cry of terror.
A shop window with a poster of a woman screaming with joy. She has her fingers up to her mouth. Her lips are darkened with lipstick.
A faded, cracked poster with two children closing their eyes and bearing their teeth.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.”

Matthew 6:22

“The eyes are the first thing you have to destroy because they have seen too many bad things.”

Lucio Fulci

A close up of a poster on a bus shelter. Someone has placed two black squares over the eyes of the model blanking them out.
A torn poster. What remains are scraps of a woman's face with mouth, nose, forehead, but no eyes.
An advertisement in in the window of a chemist advertising vaccinations. It says JAB and below is a phot of an old lady who is supposed to be smiling but is actually grimacing. Dots of black spray paint cover her eyes and the paint is running down her face.
A biilboard with a woman in sunglasses shouting with joy. She has hear hands up in front of her face. Protest stickers have been plastered across her face. She looks horrified.
“When a person take his pictures, is there any possibility of some amount of his soul getting trapped in that picture?” Question on Quora, 2016
A portrait of a man on a poster which has been pasted to a surface with heavy black lines, making it look as if he's imprisoned.
A poster with a woman in profile. It's been torn so that a flap of paper conceals her face rendering it blank and inscrutable.
A torn poster revealing just the snarling red lips of a presumably furious model now trapped in the phantom zone.

These photos were taken between 2019 and 2025, mostly in Bristol, but also in London, Istanbul, and elsewhere.

Ray Newman's avatar

By Ray Newman

Editor and writer.

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