Rapid Eye Movement

Do our dreams work as some sort of defragmentation? How does this random reconstruction of images and information visualize so many discordant elements in such a significant way? I have always been intrigued by the influence of dreams and all the surrealistic projections of our subconscious.

After a long period of suffering from the sleeping disorder due to obstructive sleep apnea, which was complemented by intense dreaming, I began to study my unconscious visions. Not because I wanted to explain them, but to re-experience them through the photographic process.

“Rapid Eye Movement” is the result of those attempts. My goal for the project was to shoot at least one picture every day, which would reference the dream I had the previous night. I used 35mm compact film cameras such as Lomo LC-A, Yashica 35cc and Olympus Trip 35, with at least 10-years expired slide films.

I typically developed E100 Ektachrome and the Kodak EDUPE as C-41. Before the cross-processing, I added more distortion myself, essentially by heating them. Consequently, the final images are –in some sense– random.

The photographs were taken between 2009 and 2017.