British artist James Dean Diamond (b 1968) draws his inspiration from theater.

British artist James Dean Diamond (b 1968) draws his inspiration from theater, film, old-master painting and the Gothic tradition that his compatriots have maintained in single incarnation or another over the past 200 years. In a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of the same way that the Romantic motion countered 18th-century rationalism with images of mystery, horror and surprise so Diamond's photographic work transports the viewer from mundane reality to a realm of fantasy and excess

Diamond, who divides his time between London and Athens, is known in England for his fashion photography. This, his first solo indicate in Athens, was hosted by means of Cheap Art, a nonprofit alternative exhibition space established by the agency of two Greek artists in 1995 Titled "Castle Keep" the exhibit to featured 18 portraits of glamorous women--sirens, the artist calls them--that are part of a larger photographic devise called "Death in a Place Like This." In specific gothic spirit, the series is a meta-reality, intended as a visionary passage by the and of the states of dying and death. The power on Diamond of the punk-goth tillage of his youth is evident in the extravagant garments, stylized makeup and talonlike fingernails of his models

Enlarged to an imposing 5-by-3-foot format, half the works in "Castle Keep" are in color. The women's artificial positions the dramatic lighting effects and the palette of rich red earth tones and whites onward dark grounds recall Renaissance and Mannerist portraiture. Diamond's sitters have a haughty grandeur, their rich jewels and finery providing rich constitutions In Regal a black-clad woman is defined against a slate field by her crimson sleeves; the austere, frontal order evokes a Ravenna mosaic. The black-and-white images have a quality reminiscent of early horror and heir films. The watery figure of departed spirit barely materializes out of the sadness while the armless Ziad, constrained in a representation of corset, simultaneously fascinates and repels

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