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NJ Mom Doesn't Get The 'Firestorm' Over Her <em>Walking Dead</em>-Inspired Kids Photo Shoot
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jun 8, 2016
Modified Jun 8, 2016
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jun 8, 2016
Modified Jun 8, 2016
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A NJ mom has come under severe scrutiny—and had her Facebook account suspended—because of a photoshoot she did with children depicting famous scenes from The Walking Dead. "This is not something I invented in my head," photographer Alana Hubbard, who owns and runs Mother Hubbard Photography, told People. "These scenes have been seen by millions of people already on The Walking Dead. I don't even understand why this is a controversy at all. It's already been done. I'm just reenacting it and paying homage to my favorite TV show."
You can see all the photos from the shoot here—which includes recreations of Negan holding his barbed-wire baseball bat over several bodies, Sasha on a pile of dead walkers, and in the most controversial photo, Carol holding a gun to the back of Lizzie's head from season four. According to CBS, Hubbard, 29, enlisted 24 children, including her own kids (her son plays Rick Grimes, her daughter plays Carol Peletier), between the ages of 3 and 7 to take part in the shoot.
"I knew it was going to be popular no matter what," she explained to People. "I was in a photography group on Facebook and I posted a few pictures for constructive criticism and it just started a firestorm there. Everyone has said everything you could impossibly imagine to me on the Internet."
She added: "They're upset about the toy guns and the fact that I shot on inactive rusty tracks with a forest growing through them and that they apparently look like active tracks."
After complaints, Facebook ultimately deleted some of the images which they deemed too graphic, and banned Hubbard for 72 hours for violating their terms. Hubbard doesn't seem to understand why everyone was so up in arms about staged photos of children holding weapons to each other: "The gun that was used for my son, came with his Rick costume that I bought for a kid," she told People. "All of the other toy guns I got from Toys "R" Us. So, I don't get it. People are commenting on all of the fake guns, but when I started searching all of The Walking Dead's photos, there's multiple pictures of Lizzie and Mika - the two little girls on the show - pointing guns. There are tons of pictures of Carl pointing guns and kid zombies everywhere. Why are those okay and mine aren't?"
Hubbard, who noted that she wouldn't let her children actually watch the show until they're older, previously was in the spotlight for her photographs of a 5-year-old cancer patient posing with a woman donning a bald cap and dressed as Cinderella.
"I'm not the first person in the history of America to have children reenacting violence," Hubbard told NJ Advance Media while defending herself. "This is what child actors do."
Hubbard also noted that she plans to shoot another series of Walking Dead photographs with the kids, and also has plans to recreate scenes from other shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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