The Dream Collector, Arthur Tress

This publication, forty years later, is a strong, relevant body of work for it expresses the “inner landscape” of the human psyche revealing archetypical fears and insights we may have yet to get.

“The Dream Collector” (1972) is Arthur’s best work that has made him internationally known. It is based on interviews he took of children regarding their dreams and nightmares that were later translated into photographs with a documentary approach. His approach is a very good example of how photography can investigate our world from both an artistic as well as a scientific perspective simultaneously.

“In recreating these fantasies, there is often a combination of actual dream mythical archetypes, fairy tale, horror movie, comic book and imaginative play. These inventions often reflect the child’s inner life, his hopes and fears, as well as his symbolic transmutation of the external environment, his home or school, into manageable forms… The purpose of these dream photographs is to show the child’s creative imagination is constantly transforming his existence into magical symbols for unexpressed states of feeling or being. In fact, we are always interchanging or translating our daily perceptions of reality into the enchanted sphere of the dream world.” — Arthur Tress, 1972

http://ow.ly/v2Nsk,by Russell Joslin, website: http://www.arthurtress.com, “Arthur Tress, The Dream Collector Revisited” published 2010,