Varying Dreams
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]”I just had the strangest dream …”
How many times have you awoken with that thought? Sometimes it is followed with, “At least, I hope it was a dream.” Varying dreams are something that not only unite us, but also mystifies us. Why do we have them? What purpose do they serve? Why are some dreams repetitive and some even common among different peoples around the world? What would happen if we stopped dreaming? Dreams are the most unexplained yet most common pieces of our humanity.
Talk about dreams and we have to talk about the work of Carl Jung, the late psychiatrist of some prominence who felt that dreams were one’s subconscious and that they could be translated to tell us more about ourselves and why we do the things we do. Jung initiated the concept of keeping a dream journal to keep track of which dreams repeated and how one felt and acted after having particular kinds of dreams. Those who follow in his footsteps are still quite sure that dreams hold answers and may even warn of impending mental issues. The majority of psychiatrists find the field interesting, but largely lacking in scientific authority and research.
Varying dreams definitely have their effect on us. Wake up from a particularly good dream and one is likely to start the day in a better mood. Dream about something terrifying or dangerous, and one may find themselves on edge and anxious for a while. Dreams about deceased family members or close friends may have us feeling depressed and lonely. Then, there are those pesky dreams about showing up somewhere important stark naked. Almost everyone has those dreams on occasion, even in tribes where clothing is practically non-existent in the first place. Opinions differ as to the exact meaning, but they always leave us a little unsettled as we try to laugh at how silly they are.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Artistically, varying dreams are great image fodder, especially if one tends to lean toward surrealism in the first place. Translating dreams into works of art is something we’ve been doing almost since we first started making crude drawings on caves. The challenge for a photographer, though, is that our cameras only capture what is real. While we can perhaps go to great lengths to create situations that are dramatic and seem somewhat unreal, where our dreams take leave of the laws of physics and reason they become almost impossible to capture. Fortunately, Photoshop™ allows us to fill that gap with special effects and tricks that make possible the physically impossible.
Today’s image is a great example of how we can be influenced by varying dreams. The original image comes from a set we did last year with model Loren Hawk. Pouring paint on her was fun, interesting, and colorful in its own right. The original pictures are not something that necessarily need a lot of manipulation in order to look good. When we started playing with this one, though, we became obsessed with trying to communicate a dreamy, etherial feeling, almost like an underwater ambiance. After almost three days of work, I think the image sufficiently captures the surrealness of a dream state.
We may never know with certainty what our dreams are trying to tell us. Perhaps they’re messages from deity. Maybe aliens are trying to teach us something. Whatever the purpose is for varying dreams, they certainly interest us and at times make our lives very interesting. To the extent we are able to do something productive and creative with our dreams is a benefit. Not to mention that visually suspending the laws of physics on occasion is rather fun.[/one_half_last]
Body Painting (2014). Model: Loren Hawk
The Abstract Surrealism of 2020
There is nothing about this year remotely resembling what we once considered reality.
Abstract Surrealism isn’t really a thing, let me make that clear right upfront. Abstraction is ambiguous, intentional removal from any objective reference. It’s also extremely controversial as some argue that it is the sum of art while others complain that it’s nothing but a jumbled mess of color with no meaning whatsoever.
Surrealism is, for many people, defined by the works of Dada and Dali. Perhaps we think specifically of Dali’s melting universe creating a detailed but dreamlike view of a world that defines reality not by what we see with our eyes but with our subconscious.
They are two very different forms of art and confusing the two is a good way to make an art curator or serious patron quite angry. Merging the forms? One would have to be completely delusional to invoke that level of insanity.
Insanity. I’m sorry, have you met the year 2020? There are no words left that haven’t been reshaped, reclassified, and/or redefined. Nothing about this year is remotely normal nor has it stayed within the boundaries of what we formerly considered real. There have been too many events happen that logical people of reason never thought possible. Our minds have exploded as people we thought we knew, including some we’ve loved, stepped off the deep end into some kind of fantasy where nothing currently happening makes sense within the context of everything that happened before.
Which brings us to the Abstract Surrealism of 2020. This is the first set in what may turn out to be an entire series (if we live so long). We asked a young model, who understandably enough has chosen to remain anonymous so that her career does not suffer from the association, if we could paint her body in a loosely defined manner—not genuinely abstract, but not a recognizable form, either. We then took the images and carefully, painstakingly, with frequent bouts of frustrated cursing, rendered each to fit a month of this pandemic. As one sees below, this results in a dramatically unique set of images that hardly appear to be related.
Let me see if I can explain the progression for you to a limited degree. A word of caution: trying to follow the meanderings of my mind can lead to internalized stress and possible combustion.
April: There’s a sense of a definite figure but nothing around it feels quite right. The lines aren’t all in place and, what is this splashing up from out of nowhere? We’re blue because we’re depressed by a lockdown that only some are observing while others completely deny that there’s anything wrong. We know this is going to get worse, but we’re still hopeful.
May: Color change as the pandemic grows more intense. School ends without any commencement. Unemployment sets records never before imagined. Arguments over whether to wear a mask rage both online and in-person, casting suspicion on people once thought to be at least marginally intelligent. That splash thing keeps getting bigger and there’s no explanation coming for why the curve isn’t flattening.
June: We’re tempted to breathe a sigh of relief and the colors calm a bit as the number of new cases each day starts to decline. People are telling us, “Hey, we’ve got this. It will all be over soon.” Yet, notice that our model’s face is no longer visible. She’s blinded by her hair just as we were blinded by unhinged optimism. We start to emerge from our cocoons only to have to retreat toward the end of the month.
July: Staged reopening plans are announced and there’s an official statement of optimism in which we believe because we refuse to accept that this stupid virus can be upsetting our lives this severely. We’re determined to have our vacations one way or another. We whirl ourselves in circles clamoring that, “Look! The numbers are going down!” and illogically letting that one statistic fool us into letting down our guard.
August: We’re smiling. We’re going to send kids back to school even if it has to be in stages. Sure, the virus is still splashing all around us but just ignore that. We’ve got a plan and there’s a vaccine coming by the end of the year. No one’s going to trust it, but it will be here. The patterns might seem to be recognizable but that’s only because we’ve looked at this situation so many times we’re starting to hallucinate good news where none exists.
September: “This pandemic is nothing,” we say as we casually flip our hair. Never mind that the numbers are starting to go up in the places where they had previously been low. Pay no attention to that huge wave sweeping across the South and Midwest. Let’s open things up some more; it will be good for the economy, and the economy is what matters more than silly things like people’s lives.
October: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Hell no, we’re not going to go back into lockdown! Open everything up! Stage 5, motherfucker! Sure, the number of cases is starting to spike again, but look at the low number of deaths. See? Hardly anyone’s dying except for the people who shouldn’t be dying. More young adults are being affected but they probably had underlying conditions. It’s not the virus’s fault they died.
November: The virus is not merely back, it’s pouring on us like rain and we’re going to drown. There’s still no vaccine and even if there was more than half the people in the US say they’re not going to take it, rendering it ineffective in stopping the spread of the disease. Ten million people have died despite the fact someone keeps telling us that it’s fine, it’s not a big deal. Keep smiling. Cancel the holidays. We’re all going to die.
By the time we get to the last piece, our entire sense of reality is warped. Our thinking, if not our vision, is completely disconnected from any sense of objectivity. We think we know what’s going on, kind of, but we’re uncomfortable, uncertain, and unsure of what to do next. If you’re looking at the final image on a large enough monitor, you’ll see that the model is beginning to fade into the background—not strongly, yet, as there’s still a definite sense of person even if place and time are nonexistent. This is bracing for disaster as our identity melts into the abstraction of calamity.
The rain is poison and like the Batman’s Joker with his forced smile, we’re laughing through the pain, unable to escape the horrors this year has foisted upon us.
No, these pictures aren’t pretty. They shouldn’t be. This isn’t Pashur’s bodypaint. This year has not been okay and any portrayal of it in traditional tones or imagery is doubling down on a lie that everyone already knows is false. I need these images to be troubling to one’s aesthetic sensibilities. We should not hide that we’re bothered, or disturbed, or possibly even worried about the mental state of the artist (the gods know I am).
There are more thoughts to compile, more images that need to sit alongside these. Give me a few weeks. Any other year, I’d be shutting production down, but not now. I need to explore more, deeper, into the pain. In the meantime, ponder over these and their implicit meaning. I’ll try to give you something more traditional next week, just to perpetuate the myth that we’re all fine, that this week is an aberration. In the meantime, ponder.
Our HUGE thanks to our anonymous model. She truly is a lovely person and I owe her a less fraught set of pictures for helping us express what we’re feeling in this moment.
For those who might be new, click on any of the thumbnails below to view the images full screen.
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