*Shivers* (Picture: Eolo Perfido)

Photographer Eolo Perfido’s Clownville series is straight out of your childhood nightmares.

His disturbing photos feature bloodied, grimacing, cackling clowns who’ve seen better days.

If you don’t already suffer from Coulrophobia – a fear of clowns – you might after looking at these images.

Eolo, from Cognac in France, started taking pictures of retired clowns he met while he was travelling across Europe.


(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

While he isn’t himself scared of clowns, his hyper-realistic images play on people’s fear of those permanently grinning mouths and exaggerated features.

(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

Eolo says of his work: ‘Clownville is an imaginary place – a land where everybody is a clown.



‘It’s like a metaphor of our own society: an inter-connected world in which everybody wants to entertain and be entertained, behind which great sadness and loneliness are hidden.’

(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

Sadness and decay are almost palpable in the images, from the washed-out colours and cracked makeup, to the hunched overweight clown sat smoking on a grand old sofa.

(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

Eolo admits a fascination with the circus performers. ‘I’ve been always interested in clowns and by any performing art form that uses artists’ bodies to exaggerate emotional truths that could not be conveyed through speech,’ he says.

The images, he adds, are also ‘inspired by actors like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, by many movies, novels and comics.’

(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

Eolo admits reaction to his photos, which have been exhibited across the world, can be extreme.

(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

‘We always receive mixed reactions,’ he says. ‘From people that love them to people that find them too strong or disturbing.’

(Picture: Eolo Perfido)

We *might* just sleep with the lights on tonight.

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