“In the mist, dark figures move and twist. Was all this for real or just some kind of Hell?” – Iron Maiden
The three images in this short series were inspired by the song “The Number of the Beast” by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden, which according to bassist and band founder Steve Harris was inspired by a nightmare he had after he watched the film Damien: Omen II.
I am very much influenced by the music I listen to, and the dark and the mysterious have always fascinated me since I was a child. As humans, we are fascinated by the mysterious and this fascination is a juxtaposition because we want to better understand and seek answers, but at the same time once the mystery is resolved the excitement fades.
These images are not my usual style, my usual photography revolves more around water. But this was a vision I had in mind, just like Steve Harris was inspired by a nightmare he had, I was inspired by an idea that came to me after watching a documentary on Netflix about a modern urban legend, that talks about an entity that abducts people, especially children, this entity, which is called The Slender Man, is an inter-dimensional being, something which I am very fascinated with. Immediately my imaginative brain went into action, projecting these images as a vision. I am not used to working with people, in fact, none of my other images include the human form, but this time I wanted to include a shadowy figure within the landscape. The figure in these images was also inspired by an artwork, which I must say, dates to approximately seven thousand years. The figure I was looking for had to resemble the figures depicted in “The Holy Ghost” cave painting; a collection of eight life-sized figures known as The Great Gallery, found in the Horseshoe Canyon in Utah.
The name of the series “Parallel Dimension” comes from the images themselves, this mysterious figure coming out from another plane of existence, coexisting within our own world. These ideas of alternate universes, Time travel, cosmology, and Aliens are the same philosophical concepts that have intrigued mankind throughout history. We are continuously bombarded with these stories in movies and in songs. And the paintings found in these caves proved that thousands of years ago, earlier artists imagined (or maybe not!) these other-worldly beings and painted them on the cave walls for us to see.
The scene had to be a dark foggy woodland, the psychology of mystery is based on the assumption that by accessing a scene that appears indistinct and vague, the viewer will acquire more knowledge and will grab the viewer’s interest and push them to explore further into the scene.
The setting for these images was set in one of the few woodlands available in Malta. Buskett is a relatively small woodland, less than 300,000 meters squared, and most of it consists of passageways and walls. The three images in this series were shot on different occasions, I am still waiting for the right muse to continue the other set of images, which for now are stored in my imagination.