William Mortensen

William Mortensen was an American photographer that began taking Hollywood portraits in the 1920's and transitioned into running his own School of Photography where he developed a photo manipulation style and focus on subject matter that erked so many other photographers at the time that he's been lost to history for the past 80 years. Seriously, Ansel Adams called him "The Anti-Christ." That's either serious damnation or high praise.

The past few years Mortensen's work has been rediscovered and, rightly, highly praised. His official site and Facebook have a ton of examples of his work - most of which is focused on the macabre, grotesque and mystical.* Many of the pieces are highly manipulated, either with double exposure, image overlays or direct etching into the plates used to create them; giving them an illustrated look. He was a human Photoshop to put it more directly.

I can certainly understand how he was ostracized in his day but these images are unbelievable, even now. Absolutely loving browsing through these archives. It's a deep well and entirely appropriate subject matter given the Halloween time of year.

* The subject matter is also largely NSFW, if you didn't pick up on that already