Memento Mori: Album cover photo shoot

Got my album cover shoot back from Marzena today, and I am very pleased with the pictures.  In this blog post I will share several of the images as well as my inspiration for the shots.  Several of the songs on the album are very dark ("Vampire," "Speak of the Devil," and "Purblind") and I wanted an album cover that reflected that darkness.

I recently became intrigued by Victorian Era Memento Mori photography, which is a Latin phrase which translates to something like "remember your mortality." With the invention of the Daguerreotype in 1839 (I won't try to summarize this photographic process, but in my understanding it is a latent image produced on a copper plate by the chemical process of heating mercury vapor... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype), photography became less expensive.  When family members lost a loved one (which happened often, unsurprising considering the state of medical science), they would often have a picture taken to remember them by.  In one type of this post-mortem photography, the subject would be posed as if they were sleeping.  In another type, they would be posed as if they were alive, with eyes painted on their closed eyelids.  Infant mortality was extremely high at this time, so there are many examples of deceased babies.

My first shot was inspired by this painting I discovered while recording my MagiCat album:

I am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea who painted this picture, or where on the web I got it from, so if you have the proper attribution information please let me know.  I was intrigued by this image for many reasons--there is an entire fairytale told in this one image for me.  I also loved that the woman was blonde (as I was at the time), was sitting on a red velvet fainting sofa exactly like mine, and had the same exact cat as me.  Here is the photo we took:

As you can see, we adapted the image to the memento mori theme, chose a darker palette for the dress, and incorporated the cat, the couch and the mask.  Also, the panels of the screen are reminiscent in my mind of the window in the image.

The next image is an example of infant memento mori:

(http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-victorian-memento-mori-photographing-dead)
I love this picture.  The composition is so exquisitely beautiful and peaceful, but, of course, heartbreaking, since we know the baby is deceased.  Here is the image we took:

We couldn't bring ourselves to pose my son, Dashel, as if he was deceased, so in this image, I am deceased and he is my living child.  Note the eyes painted on my lids.

Finally, here is an example of memento mori with the painted on eyelids:

(http://brightbytes.com/collection/memento.html) There is something so disturbing and haunting about this photo for me.  Here is our version:

Didn't Regina do an amazing job painting on my eyes?

I'm very curious to hear what you all think of the photos.  Please leave me a comment below!  

Vampire Music Video

This weekend I shot the music video for my song "Vampire" in a marsh.  The basic plot of the video is that I am a vampire and Rinat (my sister-in-law) is my human muse.  I seduce her with black magick and make her into my evil vampire twin.  

The ueber-talented Jennifer Tzar (http://jennifertzar.com) directed the video, and the equally talented Regina Harris (http://www.reginaharris.com) did make-up and styling.  Jennifer shot my very first album cover for my debut album on Columbia/Sony "Sky with Stars" about a million years ago.  I was her very first professional shoot!  We reconnected through Regina, who did make-up, hair and styling for my last two album covers ("MagiCat: Up the Rabbit Hole" and my upcoming "One Immortal Day", which "Vampire" will be on--Marzena Stergiou (http://www.LittleNewYorkPhotography.com) shot the album cover for "One Immortal Day").  Jennifer has shot people like Ozzy Osbourne and Juliet Lewis, and Regina has worked with people like Carey Mulligan, Julianne Moore and Liv Tyler.  They are kind of big deals.  Marzena shot my maternity and baby photos for my son, Dashel Emet.  I think I am the first client who ever asked her to take a picture of them as a dead body! 

**Scroll to the bottom of the post to view more stills from the video.**

This blog will chronicle the next few months as I ready my album for release, and I will also use it as a bulletin board for any and all macabre music, pictures, stories, etc. that come across my path and that intrigue me.  Please feel free to suggest things to me that you think I have missed.  

I'll start things off with the lovely Native American singer Buffy St. Marie

 and her track "The Vampire" (http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/buffy-sainte-marie/album/the-best-of/track/the-vampire).  Her voice is a bit of an acquired taste, but I love her bohemian, mystical spirit.  What do you think of it?

For those of you who don't have a Rhapsody subscription, here is a pretty nice cover by Emily Jane White: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqhCMbbmuSM

As promised, here are a few more stills from my Vampire video.