Portrait Series Idea 1- Dreams

Dreams

I had a period of time where I would wake up in the morning remembering every aspect of a very detailed dream, which before this, had been a rarity. I'd wake up and still be able to picture the events of that dream, almost like it had become a reality. We had covered Salvador Dali in a lecture, more specifically his collaborative film with Bunuel- 'Un Chien Andalou', 1929. I started to think about how interesting it would be if i tried to challenge the meaning of dreams and try to re-create them through portraiture. I thought that by looking back at Dali's work, it would give me more inspiration on how to approach this.






The concept of this film was built around both of Dali and Bunuel's dreams and was the first surrealist film to break narrative traditions. The idea of combining multiple dreams could be a really interesting concept to use for my portraits. I could gather different people's accounts of weird and wonderful dreams that they've experienced and put them into a series. Then it would challenge me to try and re-imagine their perceptions as best as i can and see how close i can get to bringing them back to that dream.

It uses a narrative form called 'dream logic'- the process of assigning meaning to dreams. I find this really interesting because no one really understands the meaning behind their dreams. They're usually an amalgamation of things we've experienced or people we've encountered, but they don't always make complete sense. Many philosophers attempted to uncover the meaning behind dreams by asking questions: 

- How can i be sure i'm not always dreaming?
- Is dreaming an instance of hallucinating or imagining?

Descartes asked himself, 'How can i be sure i am not always dreaming, or dreaming right now?' Philosophers typically look for features that distinguish dreams from reality like whether you can feel pain in a dream or not, for example. Or, like in Christopher Nolan's 'Inception', you look for the extraordinary and the abnormal to give away reality. Sometimes, however, it's not always as it seems and it would be fascinating to play around with that concept.



Un Chien Andalou

This film has no plot in the conventional sense of the word which makes it even more dream like, as it's narrative jumps rather randomly, from one tenuous scene to the next. The use of continuity however, makes it seems like these locations and the placements of characters aren't random at all. There is a progression, loosely following the rules of narrative but it still comes across as alien to the audience, as nothing truly correlates.

Another film that uses a similar style is Maya Deren's 'At Land' (1944).





This film takes the audience on a strange journey where she encounters other people and eventually, other versions of herself. Her journey is very fragmented and, like the previous film, doesn't make complete sense. We allow this however, because we realize it's depicting an alternate reality that follows a dream-like narrative. We enjoy the uncertainty of her next venture.

I thought about the dreams that i had been experiencing and all of them seemed to depict a reality not too dis-similar to ours. I thought that maybe that's why i had been able to remember them more vividly than most- it was familiar and recognizable events that my memory was able to keep a hold of rather than a dream that travels through several strange and otherworldly locations unfamiliar to my experiences. As dreams are predominantly visual journey's as opposed to that of taste or touch, i feel like it won't be difficult to capture a series of portraits from this idea. It's just what aspect of dreams i decide to focus on that will make all the difference.

Dali's depiction of dreams take on very abstract narratives and entire world's are created in each image. He describes his paintings as "hand-painted dream photographs". An image like this is so bizarre that it could be likened to images you'd see on hallucinogens. However, Dali was able to harness his dream landscapes and hallucinogenic imaginings without psychotropic drugs. The image below is peculiar because it takes animals and objects we are familiar with and manipulates them in such a way that they become new to us. The layout of this painting reminds me of certain collage portraiture. It's the clash of colour and perspective that makes everything seem out of place, rather like a collage- where you are literally taking parts from different images and compiling them into one.



Collage can be so brilliant for taking one thing and turning it into something completely different. It gives you that imaginative flexibility and room to create wacky scenarios that you wouldn't be able to create simply through one single image. I can take Dali as inspiration and turn his "hand-painted dream photographs" into actual photographs.

Surrealism

Reject this control of the oppression of the middle class society. Surrealists were particularly interested in the writings of Freud and the unconscious/subconscious mind.

'Metamorphosis of Narcisms'- Salvador Dali, 1937.



The Dadaists and the Surrealists tried to create new meanings from material- creating a form of abstraction, very prominent in Dali's work.
Andre Breton also tried to access the unconscious mind.

Born only a few years after Salvador Dali, Dora Maar is a good example of someone who creates new meaning from material. In the image below, she has played around with scale and perspective, therefore resulting in a more interesting image. She's contrasting the perfection and purity of the female legs with the grime and industrialization of the town behind. The curvature of the legs actually gives the jagged edges of the town behind more movement. It almost acts as a diffuser to the harshness of the shapes behind and they begin to compliment one another.



The image below immediately makes me think of David Lynch's film 'Eraserhead'. The tone of the image and its rather morbid nature just screams Lynch. This collage again takes two very beautiful items this time, and contrasts it with a moody, dark sky. I think the idea of pushing the boundaries with what you can place in an image before it becomes completely unrecognizable is an interesting one to explore because it means options are almost endless.

     
Dora Maar                                                           David Lynch

I started to think about how i could actually execute this project. I hovered over the idea of asking a selection of people for one dream each that i could then re-create through a series of portraits. When i thought about this idea, i imagined a very staged shoot with huge lights and intricate props to really capture the essence of that dream and do it justice. The artist that first came to mind was Gregory Crewdson- notorious for his tableaux film stills. His scenes are static, staged and silent. Although beautiful and technically brilliant, I feel like something that staged is unnatural for a dream state. Dreams are fleeting and random. That's what makes them so intriguing. So if i were to create an intricate set with no detail missed, it would almost seem artificial to me because then there's no room for change and change is forever occurring in dreams.



This photograph, if we were able to screenshot our dreams, would be something i'd imagine someone dreaming up simply because of it's ethereal nature. However, our dreams fade when we wake up and they're nowhere near as perfect as this image above. I want to show that through my portraits. I want to show how mix-matched and jumbled dreams can be. They aren't perfect but they're mysterious and that's exciting material for a portrait. I think i definitely want to shoot on location with natural lighting. See how disconnected from the world i can make an image look with next to no staging involved. Dreams are also very personal and sometime vulnerable, so i feel like approaching to capture them in a less formal way would be a good idea.

Idea

I could possibly take six dreams that I've had and create a series from that to then see if they correlate and have any relevance to each other, or see whether dreams truly are just as random as they come. It could almost act as a social experiment. I could alter my sleeping pattern to see if that alters my dreams and, if so, how severely. Show them through collage.


Laurent Chehere







I came across Laurent Chehere who explores architecture and it's narrative possibilities through his series "Flying Houses" (2012). In my portraits i think i want there to be three main elements: The person(s), the location and some form of architecture/structure/natural formation. This artist gave me the inspiration to explore the architecture side of things. I had a little play around on Photoshop to see what i could create. These were the outcomes:

The bottom three focused more on Laurent Chehere's 'Flying Houses' series, whereas the other two were just playing around with unlikely spaces. It was a fun exercise and interesting to play around with perspective and layering. I want to explore further the idea of creating new meaning through images. The bottom image especially is very dream like.We are unsure of what is beyond that door. This could be a dream where, as soon as the character walks through that door, the dreamer wakes up. On the other hand, it continue into a completely different location, like that of Maya Deren's 'At Land'. This is what i love about dreams- they are uncertain and endless.

Sarah Eisenlohr









'Mystery Jets' by Ben Giles

I then came across Sarah Eisenlohr and her beautiful series 'Wilderness'. "This collage series is a depiction of the wilderness we travel through as we navigate and explore life". I was taken back by how well the strangest set of object compliment each other in one image. They're almost the type of image you'd see in a holiday brochure for 'The holiday of your dreams' or something. They're quirky and so much fun to look at and unpick. They're engaging to the audience because again, it's placing something familiar to us in an unfamiliar space. I feel like i could have a lot of fun and flexibility creating portraits in this kind of style. Especially the collage with the tomatoes in the canyon's- It's literally like something out of a dream. It's the adjustment of scale as well that's also quite humerous. I didn't think about the aspect of comedy until i looked at Eisenlohr's collages, and i feel like including humour into my final project would enhance their engagement even more. The question now is how to present the images. I don't want to be restricted to just a two dimensional form of presentation, i want to make my final piece physical. Whether that's through a little book or something completely different, i just don't want to have these images plainly printed out. I want to continue the narrative into a physical form. I want to not only try and re-capture dreams through these photos, i want to try and convert them into a physical form as best i can. So then it's like the audience can keep a hold of those dreams.


IDEA

I was thinking further about how i could bring dreams into a physical form. I then started thinking again about how dreams are completely random. We don't really know where they come from or what they mean. They might not mean anything. Dreams aren't certain but then again it could be argued that nothing is. People have tried to find out whether dreams are related to events that you've already experienced or if dreams are subtly foreshadowing events to happen. The word foreshadowing made me think about different beliefs people have and how some people think there is a higher power that determines what decisions we are going to make. To some people, our lives have already been planned out. One form this comes in is Tarot Cards. Tarot cards give people readings of their future. It gives you a platform to interpret that what you've been told is going to happen to you. To some people, Tarot cards provide that knowledge and security as to whether you will have a good or bad future. So, I got excited by this thought because i know that Tarot cards are a secure answer to your future (whether you choose to believe it or not) whereas, dreams are a random occurrence within the unconscious mind that we don't know the meaning of. What if i was to create my own pack of six Tarot cards, each with a collaged portrait of a dream printed onto it? Then, i would have a physical form of that dream that someone could keep and it would be a secure prediction of your future. I also think that collage would be the way to go with this idea, as just a standard portrait could look out of place on a Tarot card. They have a very specific aesthetic that i want to explore and try my best to achieve.




Tarot cards are a form of divination- working with the divine, or your higher self, which is the ultimate purpose of Tarot cards. I like the way the figures in Tarot cards are presented. They're gracefully positioned and perspective is not present. They look as though a set has been created behind them due to the extravagance of their location. I feel like there is a lot of room for experimentation when i begin to collage.



An idea for possible presentation? The problem with this is i would probably need to print double the amount of cards needed so that i could have some in the box and some up on the wall.