Clown Exposure: Dreaming of Fake Skin

In his second exclusive photo for Noisecreep, "Dreaming of Fake Skin," Slipknot percussionist Shawn Crahan (aka Clown) takes us inside a shopping store window and onto the lipstick-lined face of a pouting mannequin. There, he simultaneously makes an homage to a classic 1987 cult movie and explores the taboo of, err, artificial stimulation. For the shot, Clown chose a depth of field narrow enough to make the lips, cheek and body of the mannequin blurry and dreamlike, while the hair, eyebrow and eye are razor-sharp. This contributes greatly to the power of the photo, which is alluring, yet somehow slightly sleazy.

Crahan: This is kind of inspired by 'The River's Edge.' In the film, Dennis Hopper spends most of his time dancing with a blow up sex doll named Ella. I always loved how he keeps the dialog going. People say to him, "I've seen you dancing around with her. Are you crazy?" And he answers, "I know it's a doll!" And then he'll be like, "Right, Ella?" But it keeps you going so you have to ask yourself, "Does he really know the doll's fake?"

I'm really attracted to mannequins in the aspect that I used to work for a lady in Des Moines who did windows for a prom dress and wedding dress place. And she taught me that mannequins are molded from real women's bodies, which makes them real, but in the end fake. So I shoot mannequins as much as possible, and I do it with the sense that they're real.

And if I shoot 'em just right, I can get you hot from that picture. I can get you just a little bit passionate with what's going on there. And that's what excites me about shooting them. Any time I'm in a window and there they are, I try to grab them, especially if they speak to me in that sexual sense. Then I do my best to bring the sex alive and hopefully bring it to the masses where one of the first thoughts is, "Man, I'm really attracted to this. This is hot." If you're looking at it, you might not say out loud that you think it's hot. You might go, "Oh, that's a mannequin, that's really cool." But inside your thinking, "Man, I would like to be with this person."