Fitzcarraldo
“n. an image that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling back and forth in your head like a dog stuck in a car that’s about to arrive home, just itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality. ”
–The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig
Fitzcarraldo is a project focused on creating a conversation between my conscious and subconscious mind through photographing a recurring dream. I wanted to explore the sensory details and experiences I’ve seen in my sleeping state that have lingered and grown into narratives in my mind that I longed to have any interaction with during a waking state. These dreams are varied and dynamic, filled with characters, environments, feelings, and narratives my sleeping mind has crafted. Initially, I attempted to create my dream through constructed and cinematic photographs. However, the more I interacted with recreating its visual representation in the real, the more it changed and abstracted to a point where the work became more of the essence of my imagination and my subconscious and less exactness of what the brain reveals.
Using photography, I can freeze time, scrutinize, and endlessly manipulate the image process. The technological capabilities of the medium allow me to pause and hone in on minute details of my memory. Still, throughout the editing process I was confronted with debates surrounding some of the basic concepts around the practice of truthful validity in photography. The material and details I pull apart get altered and edited no matter how meticulously I try to honor what I see in my head. The making of Fitzcarraldo has shaken my practice and my perspective of dreaming and made me question why I initially pursued realism.
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