The Dream project
In a visual studies session the whole class was asked to write down a recent dream, these dreams were then put in a box and we chose a dream at random. We were not supposed to share this dream with anyone and keep it to ourselves. We were given a two week deadline to come out with a visual response to this dream, whether it be literal or metaphorical.
I was told not to put up the text of the dream I recieved as this was a purely visual project. however, after reading through the dream carefully I began my work process by picking out words and phrases the stuck out to me or found interesting these were:
- Reoccurring
- “the route is different each time”
- Flowers
- Graves
- “I don’t recognise any of the names”
The first word I noticed (reoccurring) I found interesting as I tend to find when I have similar dreams myself they tend to merge together and I find it difficult sometimes to tell certain details apart from each dream.
I also found it interesting how the writer talks about walking through the cemetery and not recognising any of the names. Through reading this I decided to take a walk and explore Maesteg cemetery looking at all the old and fresh graves, reading the different names which made me think of how each grave is supposed to represent that person, but how hard it was to make a connection with the name and the grave to the faceless person occupying it. I began thinking about this idea of being faceless, that nobody will really ever know who you are again.
This idea stuck in my head and began researching it by simply typing the word “faceless” into the Google search to see what I could find. There was a certain type of image I connected with as I thought of my task at hand. These were:
( image above from: http://metalifestream.com/wordpress/?attachment_id=2887)
I liked that rather than being simply a person without a face, the rags/cloth were being used to hide the face, quite like what a grave does, hides it’s occupant. I was inspired through this to take images, rather than just being the face I wanted to have a whole person being hidden. So I had two people model for me wearing car wax rags. As I thought this dream had more of a creepy quality, I had the models try and distort their bodies in images as well as having some more natural poses.
Having read that in each reoccurring dream this person takes a different route to the cemetery each time, which they do not recognise. I quite liked the idea of incorporating this into my images somehow and was reminded by certain images by Heinz Hajek-Halke:
Although these images do not actually show any paths or passage ways, there are certain elements and shapes that remind me of going through tunnels or narrow pathways. Through looking at these images I find it interesting how Halke incorporated all of the different elements into one singular image and would like to experiment with this idea possibly through the use of photoshop rather than double exposures as I believe for this purpose my images will turn out looking more effective and hopefully I will have more control over what they look like. However I still went out in an attempt to find curving pathways to take images of as the dream reads “winding roads” and will hopefully be able to incorporate these images into my final ideas.
At the same time as this I began looking at grave flowers and how most of them looked pretty weathered and dead and decided in these images I wanted the flowers to stand out and stick in the viewers head as if the life of the fresh flowers was symbolic of that person somehow or possibly the life that used to be there. I began looking through Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings of flowers as I remember them being so vibrant and almost seemed alive.
I don’t want to display the images as close-ups because I don’t want them to seem too abstract to the viewer if I am later manipulating the images and incorporating other objects. So I decided I will take these images of flowers almost head on, displaying the whole of it. Like Georgia O’Keefe’s work I hope to try and keep as much colour in the flowers as possible.
My final images are to follow as I wish to display them to my class first to receive feedback, also so I can upload images of what it looks like on display.
GeorgiaRoach 
