My picks were also selected with the “mind’s eye” as the main criteria and guiding force. My mind and dreams are of course surreal; nothing in the mind’s eye is real. Everything is a distortion due to dirty contact lenses, channel-surfing, nostalgia, alcohol, caffeine, hormones, hairy caveman fingers on the shutter release, varying degrees of consciousness, hopes, fears, and desires. It is fickle and irrational, so I won’t even comment on the great picts that I didn’t select. People in my dreams are sometimes naked, especially the women (perhaps it saves time, I don’t know). I dream in color, B&W, sepia and sometimes even in hand color-tinted nostalgia.
9 - Was attracted by the monkey mouth formed by the intersection of the projection and the models; a third something that didn’t exist before. Mona Lisa is trite but also as much a cultural icon as a piece of art at this point and is as fair game as the Campbell’s soup can.
15 - Holy shit, if this sort of thing isn’t an occasional part your waking or sleeping nightmares you either don’t know your history or have an unhealthy trust in governments/humanity. The sepia, soft focus and camera vignette give the impression of an old period Brownie or even a covert camera.
21 - The burn on this one invokes the “Cinema Paradiso” film fire scene and makes one wonder if the car crashed and burned. Not to mention it looks like my hometown in the rearview.
22 - I Like how the artist has created depth and movement in this piece which is much stronger than the sum of its disjointed parts. Unfortunately, I’ve had swirly, spinning dreams like this, perhaps fever induced.
26 - Something out of a dream, slightly sinister, begs the questions of what kind of craft disembark from here, what do they carry and how far do they go.
27 - The Holga multiple exposure works on several levels, visual pun, something without a specific time period, and the progression of the natural lines in the photo carry the eyes across.
36 - Like the tonality and the arrangement. It wouldn’t work if it were rotated right side up, but as it is presents a fearful or judgmental God's eye view of the below.
37 - Manmade and natural; the housefire represents another phase of the construction supplies provided by the tree. Also works on many composition levels, Jesse nailed this one.
38 - This has the quality of a Rorschach inkblot test in that you can “see” what you want to see, but it is also less boring. Implies depth in a physical and mental sense. What lurks under the placid surface?
39 - Bloody surreal landscape with some hints at infrared, especially the sky, and a hint of the “toy box” effect without the shift-focus blur. (The trees look miniature or like props.)
40 - Besides the obvious; I like the almost solarized quality of this nude. It invokes radiation or electricity and at the same time marble sculpture.
41 - The seemingly precarious thin building, circling birds and cloudy sky give this one a sense of foreboding. The street light represents a temporal juxtaposition calling the photo’s era into question.
42 - Was drawn by the distant palms and hand-tinted sky more than the figures in mid-range. The palms seem like ones you see around an oasis.
45 - The Chinatown Holga multiple exposure works as a mental image. The right side of the image especially looks like it could be in a the bubble over a film noire character’s head.
50 - A most photographed building, going back to Steichen; looks like something out of a nostalgic hand-tinted dream. Here's the Steichen:
52 - Love the tonality of this one: red sky, yellow/green escalator and the floating figures. Has almost a Dante’s Inferno or Fantasia quality about it. (Souls descending to a deeper part of Hell? What about the figure in red?)
Out!
