amy holmes george

All my life, I have experienced vivid dream recall. Over the years, my dreams have become evermore life-like, evolving from recurring nightmares into startling hallucinations that blur the boundaries between dream, memory and reality. This phenomenon is known as hypnagogia, and I inherited it from my father.

Hypnagogic hallucinations (optical, auditory and tactile) can occur when a dreamer is trapped in a state between sleep and wakefulness. Images from one’s dreams are projected into the actual surrounding environment. Eyes are open, and the body is physically responsive. In other words, dreamers react in real time to a stimulus that doesn’t exist in real space. The sleeping mind is effectively suspended in a literal dreamscape.

I recently discovered that my son battles the same sleep condition. He inherited my nocturnal visions; sensory imaginings that my dad somehow passed onto us. We all perceive similar manifestations in our sleep. We see what cannot be touched, from moving shadow figures to creepy crawlies to “floaters” hovering overhead. These sights leave us feeling breathless and terrified with a racing heart, sometimes even paralyzed.

My father, my son and I share an unusual dream vocabulary between us. This work is inspired by those things that haunt us in the night. The images are dark and obscure, both literally and metaphorically, underscoring a distinct creative departure for me.

Awakening to Motherhood contemplates my experiences as a mother of two, with all its wonders and woes. As a proud mother and passionate artist, I am continually learning to embrace the beautiful chaos of parenting with its many gifts, pondering the everyday sense of hilarity, absurdity, uncertainty and emotional overwhelm which often feeds my work. Faced with the delicate challenge of balancing time between the demands of my children and my photographic endeavors, I find myself responding to this life metamorphosis through intuitive, creative collaboration with my young son and daughter. I seek inspiration directly from my interactions with or observations of my children, appropriating their artwork and often integrating texts from a variety of personal sources. I composite scenes that are autobiographical and at the same time fictional, with concepts that are undoubtedly introspective yet laden with universal significance. Through the lens of an artist-mother, I offer these images as an honest expression of the exhausting yet exhilarating journey through parenthood.

Double Vision: A View of Florence Past & Present is a Florentine rephotographic project funded by a 2007-08 Fulbright Scholar Research Grant and is based exclusively on the private collections of the world’s oldest photo archive, the Fratelli Alinari in Florence, Italy. Retracing the steps of the Alinari photographers, I visited significant sites within the city of Florence, rephotographed them from the same point of view using today’s digital technology and then printed the images in platinum/palladium, paying homage to an historical photographic process employed during the time of the Alinari. By pairing the original Alinari print from over a century ago with my current rephotographed version, the project offers a powerful statement of those things that change and also remain the same; a valuable visual contrast and comparison of the Florentine social life, architecture and cityscape as it once was and is now today. The apparent lack of change proved most impressive; a true testament to the Italian peoples’ commitment to preserving the integrity of their culture. Through this rephotographic project, I hope to build more awareness of the environment by acknowledging our “footprint” and the power we possess to protect and preserve our place in history.

I enjoy the juxtaposition of small-scale found objects with the fragmented figure as a way to speak to the vulnerable states of life and the body. By constructing these theatrical still lifes, I can set the stage for a dream narrative using the human form to evoke emotion, establish a physical presence and render visions associated with common sleep experiences.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a collector of things. My archive of objects always finds its way into my work. For me, the most interesting objects are formally figurative and possess a story-telling capacity. I seek to invest meaning into these seemingly ordinary objects using the body as a vehicle for expressing the human condition. I consider these prints to be portraits of objects, and also myself; portraits that investigate intimate visions associated with recurring dreams—the symbols, the psychology and the narrative. My images are not intended to illustrate specific dream stories as much as render the idea of something fleeting more real, more tactile...like the memory of a dream.