honorable mention
Lindsay Koontz Josh Raftery united states
title
Dream Images
Dream Images is a collaborative photographic series that was completed in 2020. The series was inspired by the narrative Found Poem (also titled Dream Images) written by Lindsay Koontz that describes a platonic love between human and non-human (i.e. ghost, entity or spirit). Their relationship emerges from the result of a catastrophic incident in which the main character loses his loved ones and will to live.
Sample text: "'I’ll keep you', she said 'between my shoulder blades, in my eyes, flush to my breath'. They wandered over a ruined nowhere, through horizontal wildflowers, pitiable and weak, through embers, crab apples, and blotches of sweat and tears. Who knew secrets like intertwining branches could sit in your stomach––eat at you––they were mind-wrecking. They could heal a person ...
He watched the story replay on imagined movie screens—wondered if it would disappear, become dream images. How does one cope with irreparable loss? They joined themselves together, saw the sky illuminate and were flooded by grief and joy ...
The human heart is alone, so free of any earthly tie––full of sorrow, full of tenderness and light, too curious to be fettered, too innate to be imitated. They walk into the distance, knowing they will freeze and thaw again, just like the flower, like the bark of a birch tree. Both are the same; in the cavities of their necks lie a stone. Hot—like a river of fire, they fade to ash and bone”.
1. Dalrymple Henderson, Linda. “X Rays and the Quest for Invisible Reality in the Art of Kupka, Duchamp, and the Cubists,” Art Journal (1988): 323.
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entry description
Media: Archival Inkjet Print with Van Dyke OverlayDream Images is a collaborative photographic series that was completed in 2020. The series was inspired by the narrative Found Poem (also titled Dream Images) written by Lindsay Koontz that describes a platonic love between human and non-human (i.e. ghost, entity or spirit). Their relationship emerges from the result of a catastrophic incident in which the main character loses his loved ones and will to live.
Sample text: "'I’ll keep you', she said 'between my shoulder blades, in my eyes, flush to my breath'. They wandered over a ruined nowhere, through horizontal wildflowers, pitiable and weak, through embers, crab apples, and blotches of sweat and tears. Who knew secrets like intertwining branches could sit in your stomach––eat at you––they were mind-wrecking. They could heal a person ...
He watched the story replay on imagined movie screens—wondered if it would disappear, become dream images. How does one cope with irreparable loss? They joined themselves together, saw the sky illuminate and were flooded by grief and joy ...
The human heart is alone, so free of any earthly tie––full of sorrow, full of tenderness and light, too curious to be fettered, too innate to be imitated. They walk into the distance, knowing they will freeze and thaw again, just like the flower, like the bark of a birch tree. Both are the same; in the cavities of their necks lie a stone. Hot—like a river of fire, they fade to ash and bone”.
about the photographer
The misguided assumption of my receptiveness to the space around me is a central focus within my practice. By exploring pathologies of emotion and its physical manifestations in living organisms, I often find myself at the intersection between art, science, and psychology. My work utilizes video, photography, performance, installation, text, and soft sculpture. Bacterial growths and materials derivative of the human body are used to foster connectivity between persons through different modes of art practice analogous to therapy. These holistic remedial practices become decontextualized and made more digestible by creating work that activates an emotional response. In this way, sensing something becomes understanding. My work often explores ideas of dependency, vulnerability, coping, and attachment, integrating the residual of both psychosomatic and corporeal experiences. Through introspection, I investigate the significant role our relationships play in our daily lives and explore how coping and defense mechanisms can be manifested through representations of the body, tangible objects, performances, text, and photographs. By considering our connection to the environment by means of activity (reproduction, growth), behavior (animalistic, survival), aesthetic (the natural world and human systems mimic each other via patterns, proportion), and function (collaboration), I aim to call attention to “an exploration beyond the realm of the visible and rational [within domains] of the mind—science, psychology, imagination.”1. Dalrymple Henderson, Linda. “X Rays and the Quest for Invisible Reality in the Art of Kupka, Duchamp, and the Cubists,” Art Journal (1988): 323.
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