For this shoot I was inspired by the Shakespeare play, Macbeth. In Act 5, Scene 1 where Lady Macbeth is relentlessly scrubbing her hands because she is having a hallucination of the King’s blood. This scene is a representation of her subconscious guilt and how the murder is haunting her on the inside. ‘Out damned spot, out I say!’, this is what she said when she was violently washing her hands, even though there was nothing on it. Lady Macbeth goes on to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and eventually kills herself because of these visions and remorse.

This links to my personal study because blood runs in the family. You can runaway, get adopted, your parents can die but you will always be connected to your family via DNA. Lady Macbeth was trying to get rid of the imaginary blood, but she can’t because the murder is now permanently en-scripted in her memory. Likewise no matter how much you try to distant yourself from your family, they will forever be running through your blood, in your genetics.

The hands are my own, I set my camera to about neck height to get a viewpoint of my head looking down at them. I used red food colouring as ‘blood’ and kept reapply to make is look as ‘fresh’ as possible. I used Manual setting and autofocus so I could adjust myself to whether I wanted a dark feel or not. Some of the images featuring the sink I used flash as it is generally dark in that corner of the bathroom.