statement by the artist


The Vision Seekers (1973)

Primitive man often sought religious experiences through dreams or trances.
He would travel to some isolated spot, spend several days there under some
sort of physical duress, such as fasting or exposure to the elements, and
with the aid of drugs or through chemical changes in his body, he would ex-
perience a series of culturally prescribed hallucinatory images. The dreamer
might even be visited by a guardian spirit or animal who would become its
protertor and advise him of his future course in life and how best to attain it.
In some cultures, the dreamer's soul might even take leave of his body to vo-
yage on an ecstatic dream journey to far corners of the earth. Such a ma-
gical trip might have entailed crossing dangerous rivers filled with snapping
monsters, climbing slippery mountains strewn with the bones of former
dreamers, and narrowly avoiding quickly clashing heavy gates. The spiritual
voyager would then descend to the land of the dead, where he would en-
counter ancestor figures, and then rise heavenward, flying over the sky and
stars to reach the mystical goal that is the center of the heavens and the abode
of the Gods. If the dreamer was interrupted or awakened he could have died if
his soul did not have time to return to bis body. This perilous undertaking was
an attempt to acquire such magical powers as prophecy, ability to cure sick-
ness, or communication with the dead, that transcended the human condition,
by a reimmersion in the primordial existence of the spirit world. This renewal
of the self by a return to the maternal world of mythical time was seen as the
»rebirth« of a new pristine, more invincible soul. This metamorphosis was
often symbolically expressed in the actual birth of a child - the passage
through the womb. There is a sequence of photographs that attempts to
illustrate this embryonic development and release.

Many of our contemporary dream images, such as night flight, dangerous
passage, combat with wild animals, or visitation from ghosts are thought to
parallel the themes of very early visionary trances: the thunderous flying hor-
ses of primitive dreams become our own 747s, the occult alchemist trans-
forming nature by means of magical formulas becomes the equivalent of
today's nuclear physicist with his annihilation chamber and laser rays.
These recurrent mystical strivings perhaps demonstrate that our psyches
are composed of a primordial residue of religious symbolism thousands of
years old which keeps reappearing in the unconscious and will continue to
do so as long as our basic human experiences and structures remain the
same.

[Press realease for the exhibition at SoHo Photo Gallery in New York City,
4 - 29 September 1973]



Return