Erica J. Holds the Tell Tale Heart Skull by Jack of the Dust

Nothing is more humbling than life. It's that balance between life and death that makes portrait photography so compelling.

Those characters whose lives are verging on the edge of mortality can be just as captivating to the viewer as someone living it up, enjoying a life that many would consider too short.

Imagine if you feel compelled to do something so much that it eventually leads to your death. That's what this alternative photo series is about by Bryan Wark.

What If Our Obsessions Became Our Final Resting Ground

I'll tell you what: it would be a freakin' nightmare. That's right—I'm talking about the death of your obsession.

So, what happens to people who die while they're obsessed? Do they become obsessed with something else in their afterlife? Or do they just stop being obsessed at all? What if you're lucky enough to have figured out how to be obsessed forever? I mean, why would anyone want to stop being obsessed with collecting skulls or anything else for that matter?

I'm sure you've heard me say before that I'm obsessed with collecting skulls from Jack of the Dust. The thing is, I don't just collect his art—I buy it! In total, I've bought five pieces from him and plan on adding more to my collection soon.

But back to the photo series by Camera Head: it took over a year to get my hands on all five skulls that inspired this series, along with the work of Edgar Allan Poe and The Tell-Tale Heart. Once acquired, I put out a model call, found five people who were super into the concept, set a date, and got to work!

Art Imitates Life

The concept of the piece is easy: I want to take several alternative portraits of people who became obsessed with something that would lead to their death.

I'm not going to tell you what it is yet, but I will say this: it's something you're not supposed to be obsessed with. It's illegal, and harmful, and dangerous. And yet people become obsessed by it—and they often die because of it.

I want to capture the moment when they realize that they've lost themselves in this obsession and are no longer living a normal life. They've become obsessed with something that will inevitably kill them—and there is nothing they can do about it.

When I was planning this shoot, I knew that I wanted it to be different. I didn't want to do anything like the typical fashion shoots where the models are posing and looking off into the distance. I wanted something more organic and real, so I decided to hire a make up artist and let her bring out each model's personality in their looks.

Kay Alvarez is an amazing make up artist and she did an incredible job bringing my vision for this shoot to life. Each model was responsible for her own wardrobe, but we discussed it in advance so that we could create a cohesive look for each model.

Mary Turk Photography handled all of our BTS photos and Ray Alvarez allowed me to shoot in his studio for the day (thanks Ray!). The only hiccup was there was supposed to be a BTS videographer there too, but they canceled last minute which threw everything through a loop—but we made it work!

See Beyond

While I do very much love the way it all turned out, I think there are some things I should have done differently for this experimental photography.

I think I want to revisit this series however, when I reshoot the entire series instead of doing it in a day, I'm going to do it one-on-one with several models each doing a different skull.