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Anthony
Perkins in Psycho, 1960
Alvin
Langdon Coburn, The Haunted House, 1904
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Anthony
Perkins in Psycho, 1960
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Alvin
Langdon Coburn, The Haunted House, 1904
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| Born in Boston in 1882, Alvin Langdon Coburn was encouraged by photographer F. Holland Day, his relative, to pursue photography. Coburn became most well known for his Vortographs, which were the first known abstract photographs. The English Vorticist movement in painting, which was related to the cubist movement, largely inspired his Vortographs. These photographs, which Coburn first showed in 1917, were taken through a kaleidoscope type lens that broke the image into abstract planes. Before Coburn began making his Vortographs, he mainly took pictorial photographs, including The Haunted House from 1904. Viewing Coburn's photograph, one can easily make a connection between his haunted house and Anthony Perkin's house in Psycho. Both houses appear to be wooden with darker wooden roofs. They are also both fairly rustic; trees and shrubs surround each. Each house is situated on a hill. In addition to these obvious similarities, the style of both images is similar. Both works are symbols; the house in each picture is a symbol. They pictorially represent the idea of a haunted house. With their wooden frames, locations atop hills, and apparently weak foundations, these houses epitomize haunted houses. Hitchcock borrowed this symbolism from Coburn's composition. He also borrowed the paranoiac sensation that The Haunted House induces in the viewer. Coburn's house personified; it has two eyes (windows,) a nose, and a mouth (the door), and seems to stare back at the viewer. In Psycho, Hitchcock recreated this by placing the Mother in the window of the house. The mother serves the same purpose as the face of Coburn's house. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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