Photographer Matt Thomas usually shoots landscapes. But lately, his work has taken a darker turn.
"I'm in here, I'm playing with dolls, it is not what you think,” Thomas said as he pulled out a camera, a light, a doll, and a ventriloquist's dummy at his shooting location at Spooked in Seattle beneath the streets of Pioneer Square.
"I get that a lot, yeah. I get weird, I get creepy, disturbing. I also get awesome and beautiful."
After arranging his dolls in this macabre setting, he tries to do this:
"Bring life to the setting and bring life to the dolls also."
The dolls came into Thomas' photos by chance. He was photographing a burned-out house and liked the way the light fell in the pantry.
So he put a ventriloquist’s dummy he'd owned since he was 12 into the shot: "I set him on there as an object at first, and then from there I thought, ‘I'm gonna move his hand, and I'm gonna move his face,’ and that kind of came to life for me.” Thomas said. “And I really liked that shot. I thought, ‘there's something here, I'm gonna pursue that’. Six ventriloquist dummies and thirteen dolls later, I'm still chasing it."
He looks for dolls that aren't smiling. And he swears he's not attached.
"They're models. I mean if I had people I'd have been doing the same thing. But for me, it's tough to find a model you can wake up at 2 AM, stuff in a bag and hit the road. These guys? No complaints."
The secret to capturing these images has nothing to do with lighting, or shutter speed. The secret is in how this photographer sees his subjects: "Well, I don't see creepy dolls to begin with."
When this photo is finished, and the two figures in this long-ago abandoned spot give us a shudder, it’s because they’re dancing. "Dancing in the dirt..." Thomas says.
And it’s clear that what Matt Thomas sees instead of creepy dolls, is a story.
To see more of Matt Thomas' photographs, click here. And beware.
A Northwest photographer creates spooky images with creepy dolls
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