This photographer turns creepy abandoned buildings into backdrops for haunting high-fashion photo shoots

Karen Jerzyk started doing concert photography, then fell into portrait work.

She couldn't afford her own studio at the time, so she would look for places to shoot outside.

While searching for possible locations online, she came across a picture of a deserted theater in Connecticut.

"Up until that point I had no clue that abandoned places could look that amazing," she said.

When her father passed away unexpectedly in 2011, photography became her lifeline.

"I basically poured everything into my photos, and all of a sudden my photos actually had meaning," she said.

Through photos of fantastical characters set in abandoned places, she continues to create images that capture a range of complicated emotions.

"I try to make the photos beautiful, but I also try to make them have a heavy feeling," she said.

To find her locations, she drives around in upstate New York and New England.

"People probably pass 10 abandoned buildings when they go to and from work a day," she said.

Just because it looks unoccupied, though, doesn't mean it is.

"I've made a few bad calls where I thought there wasn't a property owner, and it wasn't abandoned," she said.

Jerzyk once was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing while leaving a home after one of her photo shoots.

"I try to get permission as much as possible now," she said.

Jerzyk isn't easily spooked, but some of the homes she shoots in can be a bit creepy.

"There's definitely some weird vibes when you go to certain places," she said.

"The places that really freak me out are the houses where the beds are made and everything is pristine and they just up and left."

Usually, the properties are trashed.

She often spends a few hours cleaning up the rooms before they're camera ready.

Sometimes, all she has to do is move furniture around to create her set.

Other times, she clears out the room and then chooses specific items that she wants to use.

And then there are times when she builds a scene from the bottom up.

When staging her photos and the characters featured in them, she thinks about constructing a plot.

"I always like to have a dominant character and someone that's being taken over by them," she said.

"I almost want it to look like it's a still from a movie."

She works with designers and makeup artists to craft the models' otherworldly looks.

Ashley Rose of Ashley Rose Couture designs the costumes, and Steffanie Strazzere, a member of the Kat von D Artistry Collective, paints on the haunting makeup. 

When the models aren't wearing couture gowns, Jerzyk uses nudity to emphasize feelings of rawness and desolation.

"I feel like someone's body has more expression when it's not covered in clothes," she said.

"It's almost like another thing in itself that can be read from a photo."

She wants people to interpret her work however they'd like, but to sense the underlying emotions in each scene.

"The most important thing in my photos is expression and how the subject makes the viewer feel," she said.