Abstract

For thousands of years, Sleep Paralysis has remained a largely inexplicable phenomenon both in the field of dream medicine and modern psychology. Victims often experience auditory, visual and tactile hallucinations along with sensations of suffocation claustrophobia and paranormal visitations. An analysis of the nightmarish imagery experienced by victims of Sleep Paralysis offers a unique window into our primal and repressed fear. as the subject is forced to confront them in an intimate setting. Fear comes from within, and since the victim’s fear is a product of their imagination, they become simultaneously the cause and consequence of their own torment. “Hypnagogia: Explorations of Sleep Paralysis” is a photography series which explores this conflict between the rational mind and the irrational subconscious through depictions of the varied imagery and sensations which accompany a Sleep Paralysis episode. The photograph itself acts as a veil between the viewer and the dream reality depicted. Through the manipulation and degradation of film negatives, the photography is permeated by chaotic texture, emblematic of the tactile and visual hallucinations that occur during a sleep paralysis episode. By utilizing alternative experimental development processes, the series articulates these themes through metaphor, abstraction, and visual paradox combining influence from experimental 1970s photographers and expressionist painterly techniques of post-war surrealist painters.

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