Your Dreams and Omens Revealed

Humans have always attempted to pull back the veils obscuring the future. We peek inside the soothsayer’s parlor and gaze through the curtains which hide the cards laying on the table. The patterns of our future shimmer as predictions of the events which will either ravage or embrace our lives. These are the cards we draw when we pick up the deck. No card is alike. No deck the same. Yet because we share the same chance of the draw we are bound together, suspended in the picture albums of all the worlds. During the early 20th century, dream books became very popular. They were an odd compendium of dream images, superstitions and omens along with their symbolic meanings. Gathered from both historical custom and tradition as well as individual insight and interpretation, they were used to forecast and predict the future, as well as understand the past. Seen as primitive lists and summaries as well as sophisticated presentations of Jungian-like dictionaries of symbolic objects and ideas, the dreams and omens were seen to reflect and represent (symbolically) our life and it’s place in the cosmos. Drawing on inspiration from my collection of these early dream books that were produced to advertise patent medicines, I use both digital and traditional photographic techniques to produce Dreams and Omens as 20x24 Polaroid image transfers printed onto curtain material.