Costume is a small boutique in Dublin’s city centre, usually fronted with elegant window displays of beautifully dressed mannequins. Last October, however, Marguerite O’Molloy was passing on her way for a manicure and found something startlingly different.
“The shop is on Castle Market, a pedestrian shopping area,” O’Molloy says. “It’s a really lively, cool area and a regular haunt of mine; I actually met my husband in the famous Grogan’s Castle Lounge pub on the opposite corner. That afternoon, I didn’t expect to see this Halloween-themed display. I thought it was hilarious.”
O’Molloy took the photo on her phone, then used the Provoke Camera app to translate the image to black and white, and Snapseed to adjust the exposure a little. She did not, however, entertain the idea of editing out the reflection of a passerby, saying, “The turn of her head and backwards glance, her cloak-like coat and the difference in scale between her and the monsters – she makes the image work for me.”
The bicycle in the shop window is a regular fixture, but situated in this tableau it reminded O’Molloy of the scene from The Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West cycles through the air as Dorothy spins in the tornado nightmare. Arriving at the nail salon a short while later, O’Molloy made her colour selection carefully: Ruby Slipper red.
