SOMNIUM: The Great Escape visually explores the concept of the unconscious mind, within my own personal experiences.
Our minds are intricate networks of ideas, thoughts and emotions. Some of them are trapped in the depths of our unconscious and can only be accessed while we are asleep. The beauty of dreams is that you loose control of your mind and connect with an obscure part of yourself. By accessing and interpreting dreams’ symbolic manifestation, one can connect with themselves on a deeper level.
I visualized this project through dark, black and white, blurred images as a way to convey the feelings involved. The idea was to create a fragmented narrative that would interconnect the pictures throughout the series. During the creative process I divided the images in two categories:
Landscapes – which help create the idea of feeling trapped and lost.
Portraits – which represent my own personal experiences, especially during my process of coming out as gay. Initially, only in my dreams I could express myself freely and be who I wanted to be. I chose to use my boyfriend at the time as the main model/character of the project as he represents the closure of this process of fully accepting myself.
SOMNIUM was entirely shot on medium format black and white film and then the negatives were scanned and digitally processed. The whole process of shooting analogue relates to the concept, as it’s more personal than shooting digital. You have to put more thought into the photographs before shooting them, as they cannot be erased afterwards. Then there is the whole craftsmanship of developing the negatives and making prints before seeing the final results.
Felipe Enger, born in 1989, is a Brazilian/Swedish photographer. He currently lives and works in London.
He has always been interested in art and from an early age the photographs on his father’s National Geographic magazines fascinated him. This motivated him to start taking pictures.
After receiving a degree in Business, Felipe finally decided to turn his long- time hobby into a career. He has recently graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Photography from the London College of Communication and now works as a freelance photographer, combining fine art projects with fashion collaborations.
