Signed, New
Dream Within a Dream
Masakazu Murakami’s new photobook takes its title from an ancient Chinese story, The World Inside a Pillow, in which the boundaries between dream and reality are blurred. Murakami’s sequence of black-and-white snapshots is brilliantly arranged to engage both mind and eye, gradually building a world of small, recurring symbols, signs, and motifs (many of them possibly imagined). Given the sheer variety of subjects, compositions, and locations (which, according to Murakami’s foreword, he cannot recall), “Dream Within a Dream” also reads as a book about photography itself, celebrating both the joy of taking photographs and the act of seeing the world through them.
“Indeed, life may be as fleeting as a dream. A dream that emerges and disappears, then fades into oblivion as soon as we wake up – it is like a formless memory, or an incoherent photograph […]
Perhaps these photographs, taken half-unconsciously without any intention, offer a glimpse of something similar to the boundary between dream and reality.”
― from Masakazu Murakami’s afterword
