In the Place of the Seeds Planted Before and By Me

Somewhere, a long time ago, I read about dreams being built from snippets of things that we had observed throughout the day. While we slept, our brain would stitch together all of these unrelated pieces, like a storybook taped together from the shredded pages of hundreds of other storybooks. Sometimes the result would be benign and other times pandemonium, but always there would exist enough of a thread to make the nonsense feel at least vaguely familiar. It’s as if our dreaming minds are leading us along this subconscious treasure map, traveling from one point to the next, where making sense of it all is unlocking some inner truth about ourselves and reaching the proverbial “X.”

The photos in this series were taken with a Holga 120N, a medium format toy camera which typically produces 12 square photos; however, the option does exist to modify the camera with a mask letting you shoot 16 instead. When the mask is not used, the result is what you see here: photos overlapping one another clamoring for the frame, leaving the viewer to decide where each photo should begin and end… Or if there should be a beginning or an end at all. Like acts in a dream, each image pushes it way on stage before the other is done, demanding to take the lead. Some of the frames flow more seamlessly than others, but there is always some thread that runs through them. This series is my walk along those points, searching the threads and wondering if there is a deeper meaning, and maybe a clue to my own fundamental being.

More photos by ksreichert