Curiosity surrounding the process of sleep, dreams, and the state of our unconscious is an inherent trait in all who slumber, even more so for those whose dreams are physically acted out in the night hours. I am a sleepwalker, a somnambulist. I regularly awaken in unfamiliar places and find items moved in the morning to locations they hadn’t been the night before. I don’t know the extent of my own sleep walking episodes. My only clues to what took place in the night are the remnants of the disturbance left behind -- related to me through misplaced objects, bruised and broken skin, and morning-after stories from the witnesses I engaged.

I am blind to my actions while sleepwalking. My lucidity always comes after the fact, leaving me to piece together my nighttime movements without much knowledge as to the full extent of my travels. Polysomnia is my means of making sense of these obscured clues. A character takes my place as the sleepwalker, allowing me to direct the episodes and recreate for my own viewing what I suspect occurs in the night.

A get-to-know-you session with the 1850's tool of choice: the view camera.

I've been feeling restless around my work these past few months.
I haven't been shooting or even thinking about shooting much.
In this photography lapse I've been revisiting old negatives -- which I have always considered precious and irreplaceable, things which are to be collected and loved -- and intentionally ruin them. Through rubbing the emulsion against chalkboards and gouging any trace of identity from the cellophane, I have been working to distance myself from my desire to collect these perfect, reproducible images.