Do you remember your dreams? How well do you remember them? Do you dream in black-and-white? Have you ever kept a dream log, or looked up the meaning of some odd-occurring symbols that visited you when your eyes were closed?

Untitled from The Book of Dreams, 2008 by Sarah Fuller

Winnipeg photographer Sarah Fuller uses other people's dreams as her subjects, and gives them a recipe-like set of steps for them to make a night-long self-portrait with a pinhole camera. From Fuller's artist statement:

The Dream Log project is a collaborative venture between me and participants who agree to record their dreams via pinhole and written text. Each person is instructed on how to use the pinhole camera- the most basic and low tech form of camera that exists - and each person offers up an expertise that they have been born with: the ability to recall the hallucinatory images experienced during sleep. The process is fairly straightforward and accessible: each participant takes home my pinhole camera and sets it up with the aperture facing their bed as per my instructions which are outlined in the back flap of the journal. Before tucking in for the night's sleep, the pinhole shutter is opened and the lights turned off. The person then goes to sleep and dreams. Upon waking, the shutter is closed and the participant records the contents of what was dreamed during the 8 to 9 hour exposure.

Fuller's project on dreams has arresting, tactile and collaborative qualities that deepen and enliven her work. Sometimes listening to a friend or a colleague talk about the dream that they had the night before can seem so bland or rote an experience to the listener. But Fuller, by taking the emphasis off of just one person having a dream or a series of dreams, and delivering to us instead an entire stable of dreamers that record them for us in their own hand as well as show us a self portrait of that person, has altered this experience and made it into a series of inventive and particular objects.

Untitled from Rich and Poor, 1985 by Jim Goldberg

Seeing a variety of different individuals' handwriting has always slowed me down to a contemplative pace, even more so when what is being revealed is singular and vulnerable. In this regard, Fuller's work evokes that of Magnum photographerJim Goldberg, who trail blazed the collaborative photographic narrative with his masterful work Rich and Poor.

From Magnum's profile on Goldberg's book:

Jim Goldberg's photographs of rich and poor people, with the subjects' own handwritten comments about themselves on the prints, give us an inside look at the American dream at both ends of the social scale. His pictures reveal his subjects' innermost fears and aspirations, their perceptions and illusions about themselves, with a frankness that makes the portraits as engrossing as they are disturbing.

The current format that Fuller is showing us these images from The Dream Log is unfussy while being systematic and rings true with the immediacy of the dreamer's hand as well as the clipped-in self-portrait in the corners of each recorded dream.

Untitled from The Book of Dreams, 2008 by Sarah Fuller

To see the entire body of work as well as other series by Sarah Fuller, visit her website.