So you leap from the ledge and, within seconds, find yourself observing the distant earth from above.
You soar up and down like a bird feeling that disabling fear of weightlessness inside you – so typical of those who are afraid of heights.
There is an abandoned house of your childhood in front of you, full of familiar sounds, scents and moods that still seem to linger. It all comes back to you so vividly. You know this place better than anyone but you are wandering in the labyrinth of those sensations like a stranger and cannot find a way out. This series is an attempt to enter an old museum without a ticket. Full of archetypical exhibits of your evolutional past: memoirs, vanishing fragments of being and visual ballasts entangled into the daily routine. It is a glimpse at yourself, so the ticket is not required. With this series I am back to the theme of dreams. I capture these visions entirely in-camera using my handmade medium format hybrid and naturally affected colour film. I collect the moments of a second before awakening. Unexpectedly emerging artifacts, overflowed melting silhouettes – all this is an everlasting Morpheus Dream, always with us. Timeless and spaceless. Somnia.
About Mindaugas Gabrenas
I’m the fine art photographer currently based in Lithuania. My series Fantasma (2009) was the first integral photo project with intention to explore the long exposure landscape photography in personal melancholic and apocalyptic way. In 2011 I came back to black&white film photography and started my Dreamscapes series. Working in severe and abandoned locations with long time ago expired soviet Svema films and old light leaking cameras, I reflected a black&white surreal dream projection in photography.Back to the City is my third project, created while living in New York. Here I combined my passion for landscape and cityscape photography by mixing an American wild landscape with New York City cityscape. Presenting works in diptychs I tried to reveal unexpected visual parallels between two antagonistic concepts: natura et urbi.
Somnia – my still ongoing project about dreaming in color. To express my visions, I constructed medium format film camera, merging it from two 6×6 cameras (Kiev 88 and Kodak Duaflex II) and mostly using color films affected by black rye bread. [Official Website]
