We all love a good fairy tale - but what if Snow White ended up dead in an underground car park instead of being whisked off by Prince Charming?

A provocative new series by photographer Thomas Czarnecki casts a spotlight on the concept happy endings, turning the traditional notion of fairy tales - and the perfect princesses who populate them - on its head.

His collection, From Enchantment to Down, envisages scenes that are more suited to a gritty episode of CSI or Dexter than the saccharine delights of Disney that we dieted on as children.

His photos see Red Riding Hood dead outside a barn door, her apples strewed around the corpse. Meanwhile, The Little Mermaid lies sprawled on a beach and Cinderella is a body on a flight of steps, surrounded by a pumpkin and her slipper.

Unsuitable for children they may be, but Czarnecki's dark, gritty and complex story frames are not without their light touch. Alice sits amid the wreckage of her particular wonderland, in a portrait titled "Just a Trap," as Beauty is hauled away by the Beast in a scene termed "Not So Romantic."

The idea of fairy tales as innately dark and sinister is far from new; in fact, some of the tales were much more gory and grim in original format a few hundred years back, that the sanitised, happy versions we are familiar with today.

Click here to read about Stylist's exploration of the dark side of fairy tales, or see Czarnecki's photos in more detail, below.

Fairy tales gone bad