Danielle Quenell

Artist Statement

Around the world and throughout history, there appear to be certain archetypal dream experiences shared across cultural and geographical divides. Among these is the exploration of the dream house, in which the dreamer finds herself inhabiting a domestic space that is simultaneously deeply familiar, yet full of mystery.

In his 1964 autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung described a dream in which he occupied a large house that was unfamiliar to him, yet he understood to be his. As he moved through the various rooms, observing the furnishings and architectural details, he was struck by the realization that each defined space depicted a specific aspect of the total self and that by ascending and descending the staircase, he could move freely between higher and lower states of consciousness. From attic to cellar, the house constituted a kind of structural diagram of the human psyche.

The photographs in this series are an interpretation of the archetypal dream house, deploying Jung’s analysis of his own dream as a key. Each image is a self-portrait in which I attempt to observe myself encountering new realms of consciousness- but the act of self-observation only further obscures. The repeated theme of mirrors (both within the camera and as an ontological object) references the slippery nature of individual reality, representation, and perception, while the subtle blur of motion attempts to stretch and distort the moment contained in the frame. In this sense, these images are anti-photographs. They contain ‘too much’ time- that is, more than a single moment- and obscure the very subject they are ostensibly meant to reveal. In doing so, they depict an aspect of reality that is neither tangible nor visible, stretching the capacity of the photograph.

Danielle Quenell | Seattle, Washington

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