Photographer Jena McShane.

AA Creative Corridor in REO Town has recently hosted some wonderful photography exhibits. The most recent, Beauty & Brains: A Zombie Portrait Reveal, features knockout photos by local photographer Jena McShane.

I met Jena at a friend’s wedding in southeast Michigan a year or so ago, but I recognized her name and remembered her fetching photos from friends’ and family members’ Facebook feeds. She has a talent for capturing people’s personalities and making them look great.

However, rather than trying to look their best, the subjects of this exhibit have had makeovers to “zombify” them into brain-eating beauties. Makeup artists Sierra VanDenHeuvel and Candace Lefke turned what would have been lovely pin-up shots into something gruesome. (One of the models shared that her “scars” were made of oatmeal.) From a distance, the images look like beautiful vintage-style portraits. Then you get a little closer and see the gore.

For me, the most interesting part of the portraits wasn’t that the women were made up as zombies (and it says a lot about how saturated with zombies our culture has become that I could so quickly accept that as “normal”) — it was checking out the costumes the women were wearing under the zombie makeup. A nautical theme carries through many of the portraits with a few mermaids and sailors. One woman is in full dieselpunk regalia, another is a Biblical Eve posed with a serpent and an apple. I think a few might be goddesses, another is a witch, and maybe one is a hula dancer? Check them out and decide for yourself: the portraits will be on display at AA Creative Corridor now through December 5, 2014.

The show opened earlier this week full of Halloween spirit, with wine befitting the theme and a truly disgusting Jell-O brain and skull surrounded by red liquid and gummy worms.