IN PICTURES: From Clowns To Peanut Butter: Photographer Creates A-Z Of The Most Bizarre Human Fears

Shot over four months by Exeter-born photography graduate Isabel Mendoza, 22, the alphabetic series explores the things that make people shudder, wretch or flee in terror.

Alongside more common fears like spiders or heights, the project showcases a variety of rarer, more bizarre phobias such as Arachibutyrophobia - the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth.

Another shot alludes to bogyphobia - the abnormal terror that certain people feel towards the ‘bogeyman’, ghosts or other monsters.

Isabel said: “My inspiration behind these images were purely the fascination and curiosity I have with everything weird and wonderful.

"I do not have any phobias myself so it took an extensive amount of research and time to read about the history, the names and the reasoning behind each phobia I chose to illustrate.”

Taken for a university project, the majority of images were shot in the in-house photography studios at Falmouth University, where she studied Press and Editorial Photography.

Other images explore everyday phobias that many people have, from a fear of the dentists to Emetophobia - a fear of vomiting - and Gerascophobia, a phobia of growing old.

Isabel said: “I wanted to include some well known ones that a lot of people face on a day to day basis for example Coulrophobia which is a phobia of clowns, and then some not so well known such as Arachibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

"I wanted to show a light hearted way into the world of phobias, by using my skills in prop building and special effects makeup as well as my photography, without stripping the term "phobia" of it's seriousness.”

The project involved extensive research, with Isabel working her way through the vast repertoire of human phobias to find the final 26 for her A to Z.

She said: “Essentially I had to whittle through hundreds of phobias and narrow them down to 26 that I found the most interesting, all the while trying to see how they would work photographically.

"I wanted a mixture of phobias that I could photograph really creatively, and then some that could be done in a more simple way, just to make the series flow a little better for the eyes.

“In some images I didn't want the phobia to be obvious so I really had to think of a way I could create this fear so the viewer would actually have to think about what is going on in the image.”

The creative photographer - who doesn’t have any phobias of her own - said that her favourite image was the A for Arachibutyrophobia.

She said: “It is the first image of the series, the first image I shot and it smacks you right in the face when you first see it.

"These images were produced as a hardback book with accompanying alphabet letters and the name for each phobia, so it really was fun seeing people look at it, grimace, and try and figure out what each phobia is.”