A reenactment of Bouguereau’s Dante and Virgil in Hell. Click for full-size image.

The Raw Files is a project created by Mclain (Mac) of Swift Images & Rob of twisted figure fotography. The premiss of their project involves each photographer working with a model over the course of a year and all parties sharing their experiences.

Shown above is the result of a session, inspired by Bouguereau’s 1850 work Dante and Virgil in Hell. The photographers couldn’t get the exact pose “simply because human beings don’t bend in the way Mr. Bouguereau depicts in his painting and that is OK since the idea wasn’t to copy the work outright“.

The story on The Raw Files describes how the photo was created, using fabric to hold the models in place and some Photoshop magic without which “it would have been quite impossible to achieve the result without breaking [model] Karolina in half“.

Below you can compare this modern reenactment of Bouguereau’s work with the original painting. Click the first image to visit the gallery where you can discover many more contemporary versions of the same painting. Click the second to read the story about how the photo was created.