Dreaming

This is a photographic study of dreams.  The Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys was one of the first oneirologists (specialists in the study of dreams).  He began writing down his dreams when he awoke from the age of 13.  In 1867, he published a book where he describes the ability to not only increase his dream recall but to control his dreams at will. This particular state of consciousness later came to be called lucid dreaming.

Each of my subjects were asked to record their dreams over a period of two weeks and then write the most vivid dream upon a card holding it on their chest.  I then photographed them in their own beds.

Many of the people I researched quite often dreamed about death or nearly escaping death.  Linking dreams and death, my final images are reminiscent of 1800′s memento mori photography from that period where it was common practice for families to commission portraits of their recently departed relatives in their beds.  Sometimes these images would look as if they were only resting peacefully, perhaps deep within a dream.