Usher (2003)

The Usher project is a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe and Jean Epstein’s film adaptation, while engaging with the visual codes of 1920s cinema (its stark contrasts, interplay of shadow and light, and the notion of exaggerated make-up to restore depth to faces under harsh illumination). Steeped in expressionist and fantastical cinema, I employed neon tubes and sodium lamps to give the models a spectral presence. The project thus combined an aesthetic of the in-between worlds with the intent of probing the boundary between life and death.