The Underworld Nyx

Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation, and was the mother of other personified deities such as Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death). Her appearances are sparse in surviving mythology, but reveal her as a figure of exceptional power and beauty. She is found in the shadows of the world and only ever seen in glimpses. – Wikepedia 

Photographer: Rebecca Bathory 

Model: Tina Eisen 

Fire: Neil Watts 

Assistance/ Filming: Kostis Nikolas 

Dress: The Couture Wedding Dress Company 

One Thursday evening I meet for the very first time, the wonderfully talented Tina Eisen, who is a beauty/ fashion photographer from Germany, but now living in Milton Keynes. For a while we have become friends thanks to Facebook and I just knew we would get along, her passion for photography, her love of cats and a general sweet nature to everything that comes out of her mouth.

I had decided to do this shoot just a week or two before and the lovely Joanne from The Couture Wedding Dress Company sent me over some beautiful garments to photograph. Originally we were going to shoot down in a Victorian reservoir in London, my friend Neil said he wanted to go there and do some fire spinning, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get a model and create something epic for my Underworld Realm series. 

 We also meet up with Nikolas, who has been working on a documentary on myself for his final university project, so he was there to capture the fire and madness. We arrived at the reservoir after dark, but was sad to find it had been locked tight and welded shut, out mood livened up when we realised there was another way in, but soon dampened when we realised this was shit as well. Disheartened we decided to go for back up plan one. We headed to Abney Park Cemetery and after jumping a wall we carried the clothes, lights and equipment into the depths of the cemetery where we would go unnoticed. 

A lot of lighting equipment was needed as it was literally pitch black in the graveyard, its was pretty hard to find a spot to shoot as we couldn’t see further than our noses. We were super happy to come across an abandoned chapel in the middle, but I made the decision to not shoot inside as it was so dark and the surroundings of the trees and gravestones was far more exciting then the brick wall within the chapel. 

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