Topic: The Wall of Your Mind

[Karl]

I read an interview with Eve Arnold a while back and one of the things she said really struck a chord. It was roughly this, that when you go to bed at night "what pictures do you hang on the wall of your mind?"

So I ask you fellow filmwasters, what pictures do you hang on the wall of your mind?

It is an amazing way to help you get to sleep and much better than counting sheep. For me they change from night to night but are always ambitions of pictures that I would like to take, perhaps influenced by images I've seen; scenes that I have to imagine coming together at a point in time that I can only control in my imagination. They are almost always black and white, using film and the darkroom. Perhaps it's something about the time I am doing this, but stillness, beauty, darkness tend to prevail.

What is interesting is I get occasional flashes when I see an image of mine that take me back to this way of thinking, a sort of deja vu. I am wondering if there is anything in this, a prologue to the notion of photographing your dreams.

You will tell me if I'm odd won't you!

[jojonas~]

for often the tram for me. but I moved closer to work now so not as much anymore. I usually have a notebook where I sketch down the idea
I think my last entry was a lanscape shot with lightpainted trees..

[astrobeck]

Not odd at all Karl.

I usually drift off while thinking of pinhole contraptions or how to better dev C-41. 
Lately I've been thinking of photos I've seen during the day which then transform themselves into living dreams of some sort.
Last night's episode was of horses that wouldn't remain still.  They were in a corral but they were fighting and kicking and just being overly rambunctious. No way to snap a photo of them without injury.

This dream occurred after skimming through Tim Rudman's book on lith printing.  There's a horse on the cover that is quite striking!

[Mojave]

One image that constantly comes to my mind as a prelude to thinking of my own images is also a horse image. Its one of Keith Carters images and one of the images that sucked me into the analog world of photography like a spider sucked up by a vacuum hose. His images, like Susan B's images, are like photographs of actual memories, which is very much like what you said Karl, "I am wondering if there is anything in this, a prologue to the notion of photographing your dreams."

There is something very intriguing about the idea of making memories of memories. I mean, I always looked at photographs as a way of capturing a memory outside of the mind. A memory you can touch and hold in your hand. So when a photographic artist makes a photograph that to me looks like a memory in my head, I really wonder what that artist has actually created and if it goes beyond simply calling the work "art."

But then the idea doesnt stop there because I realize that some peoples memories are probably crystal clear, with no blur at all, and that the artists that create crystal clear images must also be creating memories of memories. And I wonder if we arent filling the world up with tangible memories. And then this all starts to get really deep and reminds a lot of Sontags writing about photography and her photographic world becoming more real than the world we all think is real. I really hated her book after a while and some of the ideas she presents are really insulting to photographers, but I havent been able to let go of some of her ideas.

Anyway, I could go on forever about this. The images that come to my mind as I drift off to sleep are often images I want to create of the landscape around me. Funny thing is, the images are all so different in my head because of all the different kinds of film cameras I have. LOL!!!

[Lino]

I've been looking at josef koudelka's pictures for so long that they become burned into my mind. And when i dream it's usually about travelling. That's what i think about when i look at them.





I guess taking pictures is a good excuse to wander about aimlessly

[Mojave]

Love his work! And that bottom image reminds me a lot of one Van Goghs final images. The painting is of a forked path in the middle of a wheat field in the middle of a storm. The crow or raven in the shot looks a lot like the fork in the path and its over a wheat field in the middle of a storm. I wonder if the photog made the same connection.

[Late Developer]

For whatever reason, I tend not to remember what I dream about at night. No idea why - maybe it's a self-protection from any nasty ones.

However, I have a daily commute which involves a train journey of a bit over an hour and, to pass the time, I allow myself to doze off. Sometimes I'll fast asleep but mostly in that state of half sleep that's a bit like sleeping with one eye open. Incidentally, I live at the end of the line, so I will usually be woken by either my wife (who also works in London) or by a fellow victim commuter.

Tonight, on my side of the train and as the sun was seting, I could see a huge bank of cloud dividing up the sky between blue, inky blackness and warm purple, red and gold sunset. This lit up the fields and towns as we sped by. I remember wishing I had my camera set up on top of the train with a big, wide view lens on it to capture the colours and set to blur the details of the scene whilst keeping the delineation between the dark and light.

Then I woke up with a jolt as some ignorant oaf strode me past down the central aisle and slammed his bag into my shoulder. Mind you, this was followed by a very pleasant day-dream about throwing him from the moving train.....