Anyone who followed my old blog, Fern & Rolland, has already heard me talk about how much I love Ellen Rogers and her ability to make me feel like I’m seeing a ghost.

I love the idea of things being haunted, and my morbid side is always pretty drawn to things that are eery and old looking for that very reason. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, I can’t make myself believe in ghosts.  I’m always looking for weird spots in photos and trying to make myself believe that they’re orbs or spirits of some kind  (like the time I visited Faulkner’s home in Mississippi a few years back and told everyone that the white spot in all my photos was Faulkner’s ghost!), but it always turns out that my camera lens is just smudged or dirty.

Ellen Rogers‘ photos, though, are haunting, and creepy in the best way possible. They remind me of sneaking into cemeteries and abandoned buildings at night, and of finding old, faded photographs in an attic. I also love that all of her work is analogue.

This particular series, called Folies à Deux, is especially good, to me, because it reminds me of Angela Carter’s novel Wise Children, which has always been one of my favorites. I’ve never been very good at writing a concise summary of a story, so I’ll spare you the pain of watching me try, and leave that to the novel’s Wikipedia entry. What I will say, is that the carnival style costumes, and the way the photos feel like they’re from a different era, evoke the same bitterly nostalgic, sort of mourning-of-the-past tone of Carter’s novel. Not to mention the fact that they play right into my ongoing obsession with old french accordion music, and 1930’s traveling carnivals.

Posted by Meaghan