Poison by Bethalynne Bajema
Insects & Angels I, the Black Cat & Poisoned Tea Society
Complete gallery of original artwork from this issue.

Additional credits:
Photography: Jim Gebben
Model: Rachel Finan

Rachel is an accomplished Butoh performer. When we were originally photographing her I asked her to do this type of performance so we could have the more fluid and strange angles for Jim to photograph. The resulting photographs are quite beautiful and strange in their unaltered state.

To create the final image I removed Rachel from the original photograph and created the background using scans of antique books. I created her head piece and body adornments by a combination of making inked drawings that I scanned and then digitally painted and textured. Below is one of Jim’s photographs before altering.