History & Research:
Night Journey is based on personal experience and scientific research. Inspiration for the project can be traced back to my childhood premise that dreams take us to far away places and are perceived as physical and psychological worlds that exist outside of a bedroom.

Having recorded dreams using a variety of methods, in 1993 I focused my attention on the nature of REM sleep, and received funding to conduct research at the Southwestern Medical Center Sleep Laboratory in collaboration with sleep scientist, Dr. John Herman. Using myself as subject, I was tape recorded in the laboratory on many occasions while awakened from REM sleep. These “awakenings” along with audio recordings and journal sketches provided vivid access to memory and the dream-state and continue to serve as inspiration for the work.

The laboratory research culminated into a room size installation by which viewers can enter an experiential environment of translucent images and sound recordings representing memory and the dream-state. The installation re-creates the fragmented and multi sensorial experience of dreaming by combining large-scale photographic murals printed on chiffon fabric with audio recordings of quiet whispered phrases from the lab recordings.

My curiosity in conducting research in the sleep laboratory was to gain access to the subconscious in order to see and experience what the dream-state looked like and to share that experience with others. In creating the images throughout the series and media utilized, my intent is to capture and portray unconscious visual memory as opposed to illustrating any one specific dream.

Studio Practice:
My work in the studio involves intuitively reading phrases and spontaneously fabricating images that portray similar narratives, emotions and gestures as in the lab recordings. To create the work, I photograph shadows of models and props in my Dallas studio using a 4x5 view camera and digital Leaf back. When fabricating the environments, I strive to design sets with a sense of mystery and ambiguity to provoke more questions than answers.

I start by creating the backgrounds first. When finished, I invite models into the studio and intuitively direct them through a series of gestures and poses until the narrative comes to life. The gestures and narratives take inspiration from memory, journal excerpts and audio recordings. At this point, the dream and inspirational phrases no longer matter. What matters is the emerging narrative.

Constructed entirely as triptychs, some of the most recent works envision connections made from moments of episodic memory to observations based in reality. By shifting views and focus, I challenge the viewer to contemplate a central narrative that combines images fabricated in the studio with images shot on location while traveling in Europe. The juxtapositions elicit multiple meanings and suggest connections to one’s visual memory.

Curatorial Context:
In a recent proposal for publication, Independent Curator, Trudy Wilner Stack states, “After twenty years of creating a cycle of dream imagery conjured from her unconscious and from deep research into the science and magic of human sleep, Susan kae Grant’s long term project, Night Journey delivers a haunting shadow world of ethereal photographs. The result of a now signature studio practice, Grant first devises inky silhouettes and symbolic forms, and then invests them with emotional and psychic narrative power in seventy resonant tableaux. She frequently alters her exhibition spaces with site-specific lighting and cast shadows to bring a dimensional experience to the viewer. The Night Journey that unfolds retraces her memory and animates her fantasy in a synthesis akin to dreaming. In images that recall Victorian spiritualism, the lurking Nosferatu of F.W. Murnau, and the allegory of Plato’s Cave, the project unlocks clues to the mystery of what we see when we sleep and exposes the surreal imprint of experience. These photographs also help us traverse the strangeness and chaos of breakneck contemporary life, like the dreams that inspired them.“

Roy Flukinger, Curator Emeritus of the UT Harry Ransom Center in Austin, sums up Night Journey beautifully in his statement for PhotoNOLA, “If you travel along with Susan Kae Grant on her “Night Journey” you may well emerge with far more questions than answers. Her images match the grand theatre of her vision and, like the stage scrim which they sometimes remind me of, once struck by light they can both reveal and obscure, delight and mystify, and present you with a familiar song that you have never heard before.”

Limited Edition Prints:
The works on paper in the Night Journey series are printed by the artist as limited edition archival inkjet prints on Hahnemüle 308 Rag paper in two sizes: 47”x35” and 27.5”x20”. Edition sizes are 9 and 20 respectively. Each print has a hand-torn white border with a de-bossed signature stamp on the front and labeled and hand-signed en verso.

Through this printing process, the lush paper surface and dark color palette illuminates the emotional quality of the dream-state and is reminiscent of a rich charcoal drawing.

Chiffon Murals:

The fabric murals in the room-size installation are one-of-a-kind images printed as 46” x 96’ dye sublimation prints heat-transferred onto chiffon.