Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Jung
This ongoing body of work explores the fleeting moments between dreaming and waking – the blurred seconds in which imagination and reality collide.
As a child, I suffered vivid nightmares that stayed with me for days. Often, I would walk around not sure if I was dreaming or awake, as the lines between the two remained blurred. Existing within the shadows of the unconscious made life a curious synthesis of magic and reality. Portals to the unknown emerged, offering me pathways that seemed to bridge the gap between real and unreal, life and death. Though the intensity of my dreams did not lessen as an adult, my response transformed. Initially, I was lost within the haze of my dreams. But now, it is through my dreams that I truly see.
Conceived as a trilogy, this project is presented in three successive chapters, On Waking Dreams, Between and Flight, which explore three states of mind: dreaming (subconscious), sleeping (unconscious), and waking (conscious). To create the images, I recall a significant metaphor, contemplative moment or pathway into the unknown from a dream the night before. I then capture the fading memory on film that very same day using details from my own imaginings to tap into the collective unconscious.
For these series, I wanted to find a way to portray my dream-like visions entirely in-camera, rather than with post-processing manipulations. To achieve this, I created twenty-one hand-made film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic, vintage camera parts and random household objects and the single element lenses are molded out of plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive limitations has required me to rely on instinct and intuition – the same tools that are key when attempting to interpret dreams.
ABSENCE OF BEING
A plane disappears into the clouds. We can’t see it, hear it or touch it, but we know it’s there. Our senses can give us no tangible evidence it continues to exist. But still, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt it’s there. We suspend limitations of our senses, and believe. ?
When a person dies, do they simply cease to exist because they no longer have a physical presence? Or do they remain with us through the remnants of the lives they lived? When a building is razed, is it truly obliterated, or does its imprint remain in the collective unconscious? ?
This ongoing series explores how the past remains with us, if only in shadows. These images capture fleeting memories, spotted from the corner of an eye that vanish the moment we turn to really look. And yet they remain, for the imprint remains with us. We are living in the present, but the past reminds us that it is part of us, too, as is the future, and we of them.
With this body of work as with my former series, I captured these visions entirely in-camera using a collection of hand-made film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic, vintage camera parts and random household objects and the single element lenses are molded out of plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive limitations has required me to rely on instinct and intuition – the same tools that are key when trusting in the unseen.
SUSAN BURNSTINE