Lucid
"Lucid Dreaming" is a term used to describe the phenomenon of coming awake inside your own dream, the moment when you are able to view yourself, as dreamer. It implies a heightened state of awareness, and at the same time, a retreat from the waking conscious world. All the photographs in this "Lucid" series were taken in a summer community on the shores of Lake Michigan, a place where city parents go to get away from it all -- and where their children spend long days in each other's houses and on the beach. Here we find them under a blanket, standing in the garden, gathering outside the screen door. No matter their location, they seem to feel free to pose and cavort in ways that are mix of maturity and innocence; they ignore any of the differences in age or gender that might separate them were they viewed during the school year, classified by grades, sitting at their desks.
There's an air of Victoriana here, along with elements of melancholy, even death. One child floats on her back, Ophelia-like, her face just barely above water level. Ripples and eddies play all about the tendrils of her long hair. Elsewhere, on a sandy beach, we see a boy, also on his back, his eyes closed, surrounded by richly draped cloth and dried flowers as if they were offerings on death bier.
Only one image here depicts an adult, and only at waist height -- a woman holding a long loop of snakeskin in her hands. Snakes symbolize both endings and renewal; no matter how old they get, they never stop growing. What awaits these children in future no photograph can show; but the woman holding that snakeskin, perhaps now mother, was once child.
And the Eternal itself might show itself to us -- if we close our eyes, and let the summer pass.
Lucid