Dreamland

The mystery in the photograph

Black dog, Rankin County, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)

There is a certain point in life in which you realise it’s no longer interesting that time goes forward[.]

Rachel Cusk, Second Place

Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, Polaroid Spectra (2015)

Home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers, Jackson, Mississippi, Polaroid 600 (ca. 2015)

I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

David Lynch

Jackson, Mississippi, Polaroid Land Camera with Fuji FP-100c (2015)

Anne, Leflore County, Polaroid SX-70 (2017)

Just outside Durant, Mississippi, Polaroid 600 (2017)

I love child things because there’s so much mystery when you’re a child. When you’re a child, something as simple as a tree doesn’t make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven’t got a handle on the rules when you’re a child.

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.

David Lynch

Jackson, Mississippi, Polaroid Land Camera with Fuji FP-100c (2015)

Times Square, NYC, Polaroid 600 (ca. 2015)

Running alone, trapped in this world;
Not your own, not your home
Pushed down into the dust, left by fate to rust . . .
Look up at the moon child, you will be home soon!

F——- Up, “Act One,” from Year of the Horse

Portrait of the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, Jackson, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2017)

There’s always fear of the unknown where there’s mystery.

David Lynch

Bryson City, North Carolina, Polaroid 600 (2020)

Portrait of a room in a home in Oxford, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2017)

Language is the only thing capable of stopping the flow of time, because it exists in time, is made of time, yet is eternal—or can be.

An image is also eternal, but it has no dealings with time—it disowns it, as it has to do, for how could one ever in the practical world scrutinise or comprehend the balance sheet of time that brought about the image’s unending moment?

Yet the spirituality of the image beckons us, as our own sight does, with the promise to free us from ourselves.

Rachel Cusk, Second Place

Grey Gardens South, Tallahatchie County, Mississippi (2017)

Chinese restaurant, New Year’s Eve, Hueytown, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2020)

I want to be good
I want to navigate this hate in my heart
Somewhat better
I want to feel it
But with the feel there is an ache I meet
to desire living[.]

Japanese Breakfast, “Slide Tackle,” from Jubilee

Portrait of the author, photographer unknown, Chinatown, NYC,Polaroid Land Camera with Fuji FP-100c (2018)

Holiday Inn, somwhere outside Montgomrery, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2017)