Daguerrean Dream, Visual Symphony - Part III

Daguerrean Dream
Visual Symphony – Part III

Imaginary Scherzo

  Fast and fleeting imagery of imagination, rip and ripple continually through consciousness.  In a whimsical whirlwind, they momentarily carry me to otherworldly places, where surreal scenarios imprint themselves upon the matrix of my mind.  Reality’s relativity is stretched to last sustainable limits, and in that stressed state is let to mold itself anew, with freshly redesigned self-sustaining properties, which let me glance upon themselves in relatable ways.  Was I dreaming, or did that really happen?

  In this third movement of my Daguerrean Symphony I wanted to explore the sacred space of my dreams.  I set out to explore those endless ways, in which visual information, gathered and retained throughout the waking parts of my life, is metamorphosed by the lens of fantasy.  Episodes of daily existence and feelings, scenes and semblances of all kinds, personal history and aspirations; all these exist within the cranial annals of memory, a primordial soup of ephemeral thought.  It is during dreaming cycles of our resting hours, and sometimes in brief apparitions we may label as daydreams or, in more extreme cases, even hallucinations, that gray matter acts to reorganize and reshape it all as if playing with  building blocks.  In which unexpected and exciting ways will these reworked forms present themselves?  

  Lying in bed, half awakened from a vivid dream, I often concentrate on these lessons of newly formed connections.  At times strikingly bold, and at times as if cloaked by fog, they all have lessons for me to learn, and, who knows, perhaps to teach.  Should I labor to represent upon a silver plate a particular instance of such sight, will the experience of one who views my final image be relatable to my own? I dare to dream so, but in the end that’s irrelevant.  When you look at the 18 plates below, what is it that You see?  Which neural connectors are triggered, which bits and pieces are trawled up from subliminal depth of Your cognition?

Dreamer

Head In The Clouds

Breath In

Projective Synesthesia

Photography For Clowns

Creation

Third Eye Door

Buddy

Root Energy

Branch Energy

Night in OB

Cactus Spikes

Lines Of Communication

Emergence

Prangey Redux

Party Bug

Skull Space

Gaze

On Technique:

  Dreams and visions are complex cocktails of reality and imagination.  All senses and experiences are jumbled and reorganized, and what emerges from that is usually something never before seen or experienced.  Thus, to create these daguerreotypes, I set out on a path not yet explored by image-makers of the past.  Starting in late 2018, I devised and executed a series of experiments involving over 100 separate trials. All work was carried out in strictly analog fashion. The goal was to explore properties of daguerreotype process, which, just like our subconscious, were always hidden in plain sight. Along with other effects, I was most interested in controling and intensifying those colors within refractive capability of image surface, as well as exploring limits and boundaries of opalescense.  By early spring , after much meditation upon plate behaviour while given various treatments, I produced the first plates, which would subsequently evolve into this third part of the symphony.  

  As you likely have noticed, most of the plates above are shown at a slight to moderate angle.  This angle of view and lighting has been selected to best represent the color of the original.  In fact, looking at the mirror-polished silver surface of the plate squarely and straight on, shows the viewer’s reflection, so daguerreotypes are always viewed slightly askew.  There is simply no way to even capture in a digital copy the amount of detail a daguerreotype holds, much less so to relate that to viewers upon a screen at 72dpi.  With its weight and presence, a daguerreotype is meant to be examined live, ideally while being held in hand, and interacted with.  All of the tones and colors you see play and change as the viewer changes their position or the position of the plate.  So just imagine that you’re the one holding these unique object we call ‘Daguerreotypes’.

Anton