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This semester we have been encouraged to experiment. I've always seen bath shoots- mainly on pinterest- and been a little too afraid to try them out. But I have been wanting more and more to push my practise and challenge myself to move further and further out of my comfort zone. I decided to dive right in (pun intended). I first headed over to Pinterest for some general inspiration:

The scene from the play has been the inspirtion for paintings and photographs alike. One painter- Sir John Everett Millais painted 'Ophelia' 1829-1896. The woman he painted actually became rather ill as a result, as Millais had her pose in a bath. He had oil lamps near the bath to keep the water warm, however, they went out and as he was so consumed in his painting, he didn't realise and so the model became sick. This, however, did mean he was able to capture a very lifelike imaginng of a dead Ophelia.

It's likely that this painting has had a huge influence on the photoshoots that take place in a bath. They still have the same flower imagery, but where Ophelia (top) uses imagergy to symbolise death and the ending of life, there is a trend amongst photography to use milk bath shoots with pregnant mothers, therefore the flowers are symbolising fertility and the beginning of life (bottom).

My Shoot

I decided that my shoot would have a darker theme to it. I wanted the water to be black. I didn't really think much about the context when I went into the shoot. I just knew that I wanted something floral with dark water. I ordered some bath bombs off a website called Hex Bomb (you can find them here) the bath bombs I ordered were called 'Black as your soul' and it wasn't an understatement. Your body literally disappears under the water, into a dark abyss of black water. Here are some of the images i produced that sparked the idea for my project:

When I looked back at the images I was reminded of the figure Lilith from Jewish Mythology. The first wife of Adam who chose to leave the Garden of Eden instead of submitting to the will of her husband. She subsequently became the mother of all demons and a monster who supposedly hurt pregnant mothers and children. I was able to draw symbolism from my images that linked to her depiction such as the flowers which link to both fertiltiy and her being the mother of demonic spawn and a reference to the Garden of Eden.  Black is symbollic of evil, mystery, rebellion, fear and power.

This shoot helped me come up with my project idea. I want to explore women in mythology that have been demonised by the larger patriarchal society and try to challenge the depictions of them, figures like Lilth. I decided this project would be called 'Mythos'.