Joshua Hoffine

PHOTOGRAPHER | FILMMAKER

Joshua Hoffine is one of the most recognized photographers in the world. He is a pioneer in the subgenre of Horror photography.

“My role as a Horror photographer is to show you what you don’t want to see.

I stage my photo-shoots like small movies, with sets, costumes, elaborate props, fog machines, and SPFX make-up. Everything is acted out live in front of the camera.

I believe that the Horror story is ultimately concerned with the imminence and randomness of death, and the implication that there is no certainty to existence. The experience of Horror resides in this confrontation with uncertainty. It tells us that our belief in security is delusional, and that the monsters are all around us.”

Hoffine began making ‘Horror photographs’ in 2003. His work exploded on the internet in 2008 when he released a series of images exploring the nature of childhood fears. Since that time his work has been featured in countless magazines, anthologies, and news outlets around the world, and he has developed a cult following for his meticulously staged photographic works.

His work has been featured in the Horror publications Rue Morgue, Fangoria, Horror Hound, Scream UK, Virus, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. His commercial clients include Sony, AMC Theaters, and The National Opera of Paris.

4 Min | Horror | USA | Color | English | 2014

In 2014 Hoffine released his first short Horror film titled Black Lullaby.

Black Lullaby is about a curious young girl and her encounter with the Boogeyman. The film continues the unique visual style featured in Hoffine’s photographs. Financed by a successful Kickstarter campaign and featuring SPFX Make-up by J. Anthony Kosar, the film is regarded as the climax to Hoffine’s popular series of photographs dealing with childhood fears.

Watch Black Lullaby

12 x 12 inches | 190 pages | Color | English | 2018

In 2018 Dark Regions Press published a hardbound collection of Hoffine’s Horror photographs.

The comprehensive volume spans 13 years of work and includes rare behind-the-scenes photos and artist commentary. A signed and numbered Deluxe Limited Edition version of the book was also released bound in leather with a dust jacket and black linen slipcase.

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HORROR PHOTOGRAPHS | 2003 – 2019

PossessionWebsize

POSSESSION | 2019

Horror is more than a tool for excavating and taming our fears—it holds a mirror up to the most troubling aspects of our culture, forcing us to confront whatever gazes back. Good horror is never about some imagined boogeyman; it’s always about us.

Horror’s metaphorical potential takes center stage in Joshua Hoffine’s newest image, POSSESSION. At first glance, the photograph presents a classic possession narrative: two patriarchal forces, one ostensibly good and one assumed to be evil, vying for control of a woman’s body. (In possession stories, the possessed rarely have any say in the matter.) Look closer, though, and the story twists into something unexpected—and much more powerful.

Too often, women in possession tales are shoved to the margins. They’re either vessels waiting to be inhabited by some malevolent entity, or victims awaiting rescue by a heroic—and usually male—authority figure who spends much of the story sifting through his own psychic baggage. But in Hoffine’s possession scenario, the priests are reduced to nameless, faceless entities—they could be representatives of any system where power is disproportionately wielded by men, from the Catholic Church to the Supreme Court to the U.S. Senate.

In Hoffine’s image, the real focal point is the woman at the center of the drama. Any woman in America today can imagine how she might feel: unmoored and exposed, surrounded by men who wield power over her life and body. And while she isn’t overly sexualized, the artist’s careful staging recalls another traditional (and thorny) aspect of possession narratives: the demonization of a woman’s sexuality. In pop culture, early signs of demonic possession often include strange bodily contortions and shockingly obscene language and gestures—female eroticism is weaponized by dark forces and banished altogether by their godly counterparts. It’s a reminder that in fiction, as in life, few things are more threatening to masculine authority than a woman’s sexuality.

It’s a long overdue reframing of a familiar genre trope. There’s plenty to unpack here, from the ominously boarded-up window to the Sacred Heart portrait of Christ directly opposite it. But, like some of the best works of horror, the image’s real power lies in its ambiguity: are the priests attempting to drive some hostile, alien force from the woman’s body, or is the truth even more disturbing—is it her own power and agency they want to exorcise? – April Snellings