Boy in Flood Dream, Ocean City, New Jersey
In the late 1960s, Tress began audio-recording children recounting their dreams and nightmares. He then collaborated with the young people, who acted out their tales for the camera, and published the resulting surreal images in the 1972 book The Dream Collector. Many of the children shared common nightmare scenarios such as falling, drowning, and being trapped, chased by monsters, or humiliated in the classroom. Here, a young boy clings to the roof of a home that has washed ashore as if after a flood. The desolate landscape evokes the sort of non-place characteristic of dreams and conveys feelings of loneliness and abandonment.
Artwork Details
- Title: Boy in Flood Dream, Ocean City, New Jersey
- Artist: Arthur Tress (American, born 1940)
- Date: 1972
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Mat: 18 × 18 in. (45.7 × 45.7 cm)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 1973
- Object Number: 1973.544
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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