Last Updated on 01/30/2025 by Lara Carretero
Cinema is one of the few visual arts that continue to influence millions. Whether good or bad, movies tend to make us smile, weep, feel hopeful, or be enraged over themes and situations that sometimes photographs cannot fully convey. Yet, despite the red carpets and glamour, the film industry has been built on pain and secrets. When the #MeToo movement unveiled the horrors, we began to uncover the terrible individuals behind some truly iconic films. Since then, many have spoken out about their traumatic experiences on film sets; among them was Raphaël Neal, a French photographer, who also encountered a horrifying situation in 2020. After years of concealing his emotions, Neal finally found a creative outlet in his art. Today, his photo series is set to shake viewers awake from their romantic reveries about the glamour industry.
All images are by Raphaël Neal and used with permission. For more, visit his website or follow him on Instagram @raphaelneal.1. His series, Hollywood Nightmares, is also available for purchase.
How Creative Strikes
Titled ‘Hollywood Nightmares,’ the project is a comment on the French cinema industry, which is deeply inspired by Hollywood. Following the incident, Raphaël Neal, who was in a state of shock, turned to creating dark self-portraits inspired by old studio photographs of movie stars he adored. “I felt attacked and humiliated, and my response was to attack the immaculate beauty that is often associated with cinema,” he tells The Phoblographer in an interview. However, it was not until the #MeToo era that Neal decided enough was enough. “I was probably worried I’d be seen as ‘difficult’ and excluded. But in 2020, it went so far that I decided to trust my guts and be open about it, hence this violent photo series,” he explains.
The fracture between a photo and its interpretation made me want to produce images with very little information that would give lots of possibilities to the viewer and allow him to project his own narrative onto it.
Raphaël Neal
When viewers look at ‘Hollywood Nightmares,’ they only see at the surface. The gorgeous neo-noir and 1950s settings seem no less than a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock, Ida Lupino, John Ford, or John Cromwell movie. But it is only at a closer glimpse that they begin to see the details: gasoline, burnt face, or wrists covered with a bandage. In these little unseen elements, a story emerges–not of a fictional character, but the real people who portray them. “I wanted these images to show what was not supposedly photogenic: not only the physical matters (blood, scars, feces, semen…) but also the unattractive emotions like bitterness, paranoia, jealousy, resentment,” says Neal. “All the things that the movie industry doesn’t want to show nor see, and yet is full of.” by following his heart, the photographer also portrays how emotions, when they are fully embraced, can lead to an epiphany. “All these ideas were showing up because I was also allowing myself to experience difficult and supposedly ‘shameful’ feelings,” he explains, further adding how sentiments such as anger or bitterness must be expressed instead of repressing them.
The Making of the Nightmares
Once Raphaël Neal began working on his project, ideas began to flood his mind. Each self-portrait took him around a week to execute to perfection. “I work on my own on every aspect of the picture, so it’s quite a slow and solitary process,” he states. This meant Neal had put his ideas to paper, searched for 1940s and 1950s-inspired outfits, prepared the sets, and then made the images. “Creating a theatrical set is pretty exciting, though very challenging when you don’t have a big budget. Again, those restrictions excite the imagination,” he explains. The make-up and hair, too, took him hours to learn from tutorials online. As part of his practice, the photographer also watched old movies, especially film noirs with Lizabeth Scott, Ida Lupino, or Barbara Stanwyck. “The whole thing, as dark as it looks, was about having fun, especially because I was working on my own: I could demand a lot from myself and be my own tyrannical director.”
However, while the images are dark, they also have a sense of humor and burlesque. The exaggerated expressions, the beautiful dresses, and the contorted faces further reveal a story of their own. “I like this ambivalence because, again, it creates confusion: who is the victim? Who is guilty? Like in some toxic relationships, it takes two to tango,” he explains. In the end, this humor and glamour also portray the complexity of human beings. We come in shades of grey; some are much darker than others, and that’s what makes us so different.
Despite the horror of this series, I hope there is warmth and compassion. I never laugh at my characters, even when the situation is ridiculous. I’m on the side of the humiliated.
Raphaël Neal
At the same time, through the present, Neal also comments on the entertainment industry’s past. The 1940s and 1950s were a golden era when films were more rooted in fiction than in reality. “Movies were entertainment, not education. Therefore, they were not always that politically correct but instead very flawed, therefore very human,” he explains. It also meant that characters would go beyond being mere victims; they could be the perpetrators, too. “It’s way more complex than the idea of the one-dimensional plot and characters we think of nowadays when we talk about old Hollywood.” Similarly, the women in his photographs are a reflection or an idea of what a woman should or could be.
To shoot the entire series, Raphaël Neal used varied photography equipment, such as Fresnel lights by ARRI, color gels, diffusers, and a portable flash. Initially, he utilized a Canon 5D Mark II, but after its demise, the photographer switched to a Sony A7R IV paired with a Sony/Zeiss 50mm f1.4. When he is not shooting digitally, Neal uses a medium-format Mamiya RZ 67 Pro II.
What is Art Today?
Despite creating stunning works, Neal always finds himself dejected. “I delude myself into thinking that I master and control everything in the picture I’m making, yet I often end up betraying myself and missing certain revealing details,” he states. At the same time, he never leaves anything for post-production other than mere corrections to contrast and highlight.
For someone who loves to create everything in an in-camera, it is pretty evident that the artist is not in favor of AI photography or the boom of content. “It saddens me, not for what it is, but for how it is used,” he explains. “I see a lot of laziness behind the people (a majority of men) who use it. A lot of them seem to prefer to take shortcuts instead of working at finding solutions and collaborating with people. That’s what I find the most tragic, the lack of human connection.” However, this doesn’t mean he is against AI, as he believes that the technology existed before the recent boom. But what bothers him is how often we leave everything up to our creations, including decisions that we should make. “This is not a problem that appeared with AI but a problematic consequence of a capitalistic society. The “committee decision” vibe that is going on in the art and entertainment worlds right now is appalling because it’s using figures and data to anticipate what a majority or a specific community of people want, and not individual people – which hopefully you won’t ever be able to know for sure. I want to be moved by surprise,” he adds.
Raphaël Neal’s ‘Hollywood Nightmares’, despite not trying to be political, proves why we must continue to call out people who have crossed the line. It is only after repeated stories such as these are made public that more and more people will find the courage to speak up. Otherwise, the demons will rule, while the innocents will be forced to hide in shame, thus failing us as a liberal society.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.
