Bill Lusk – The elsewhere Daydreamers series was photographed by Bill during a residency at the Elsewhere Museum. The museum houses an abundance of vintage wardrobe and occupational materials within it’s collection.
Bill has recently focused on work that features people in a dream state suggestive of possible comprehension or resolution of personality theories related to ideas of the personal and collective unconscious and making sense of inner conflict. So, his response to the collection was to build work environments for characters paused from the work at hand divorcing each from their normal public behavior while in a daydream, an intimate moment. In turn, each viewer is allowed to relate to the circumstances presented and question or answer one’s own dream behavior and social behavior type.
The pictured library was built from the collection of books in the Elsewhere library. The entire library of books was painstakingly sorted by hand into color categories and then reshelved into a newly arranged and constructed library using the heavy-toned volumes for the perimeter of the room and exchanging out the single color behind the subjects in concurrence with the color themes used throughout the remainder of the compositions. Bill had access to the collection’s trove of outdated machines, office supplies, vintage furniture and wardrobe to imbue the series with complex texture, color, and memory referencing again the dreamlike state.
Bill’s position is that photography is a medium that provides an immediate sense of reality and relatability permitting viewers to exchange places with the figure in the portrait to examine one’s own personal or cultural behaviors. He attempts to sway the viewers attention by expressing a distinctly modern aesthetic by virtue of commercial lighting, post-production processes, and the digital medium placed in proximity to dream and memory elements.
