Dream State

For years, I’ve stared off into space, feeling as close as I could to nothing. Daydreaming wasn’t a place for me to think or be in my own world; it became a safe place for me to go when I needed to escape. Dream State is a physical and emotional depiction of the human experience and the brain’s ability to disconnect.

Dissociation is a trauma response resulting in a disconnection between the mind and body. For me, it is a state of feeling like you are looking through people instead of at them, it’s like watching a movie of yourself five years in the future and ten years in the past, at the same time. In this series you will see an exploration of the human connection through contemporary portraiture, and the question of what it means to be in a space. A poem by Mary Oliver titled Wild Geese weaves the images together; A poem that I repetitively read aloud to myself during a 48 hour solo camping experience in the Moab desert when I was 16 years old, and a poem that has continued to ground me since. The humans included in this project each play their individual role in my life and my journey through dissociation, holding me tight while giving me space to heal.