DREAMS AS SOUL CREATIONS NOW

Are dreams images that your soul makes? Are they conjured by stirrings deep within?

Sometimes our souls soar into a dream. Sometime we gently drift. Sometime real life is so hard, it forces us to dream… like it did for Kirsty Mitchell.

KIRSTY MITCHELL

British photographer Kirsty Mitchell pours her soul out in her dreamlike photos. After her mother died of brain cancer, in 2008, Mitchell expressed her inner yearnings, fears, and curiosities through Wonderland, a series of surreal photo-compositions.

“That was when photography engulfed me, becoming an overwhelming passion that I could not stop,” says Mitchell.

Ideas for her images came from childhood memories, stories her mother told her, connections to her mother’s own soul.

“Photography became my only escape when I could no longer talk about how I felt. It became an utter fantasy that blocked out the real world, and a place where I could return to my memories of her, far away from those hospitals walls,” explains Mitchell.

Mitchell had a successful career in the fashion design world. She began work at the design studios of Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, both of whom have deeply influenced her work.

Mitchell’s love for fashion and costume design comes through bright and clear. She creates images in which she had a hand in designing and making every costume, set element, and prop.

Mitchell acts out her dreams.

“Since embarking on this path, I have walked on snow covered in flowers, stood in lakes at sunset, painted trees, set fire to chairs, made smoking umbrellas, and giant wigs from stolen flowers,” she shares.

While dreams are fleeting, Mitchell’s Wonderland series took three years to complete. Some images took as much as 5 months to produce.

When Mitchell envisioned the intense color of bluebells, in bloom only a brief few weeks per year, she waited a full 12 months so she could shoot costumes to match their color.

“All the characters came to me in my dreams,” Mitchell explains.

Mitchell has collaborated with FX Media, who helped to shoot a mini series about all of the incredible effort that goes into Kirsty’s work, including a behind-the-scenes clips detailing the preparation for each image, all of which, you can find below.

There are currently four films in the series:

The Stars of Spring will Carry you Home

The Secret Locked in the Roots of a Kingdom

She’ll Wait for You in the Shadows of Summer

Gaia, the Birth of an End

Mitchell has recently exhibited with Italian Vogue and was recently made Nikon UK’s Ambassador of Fine Art Photography.

Learn more about her work via her website and get info on limited edition prints here.

Read more about Beautiful Dreams, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including Building Dreams Now, Kepler’s Dream Beautifully Resurrected Now, 10 Beautiful Ice Cream Dreams Now, Looks Like a Dream Now, Beautiful City Dreams and Photo Mind Trips Happening Now.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Dream in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 09.07.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Storyteller.”
2. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “Euphaeidae.”
3. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Guidance of Stray Souls.”
4. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “Gaia’s Spell.”
5. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Secret Garden.”
6. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Lavender Princess.”
7. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “Lady of the Lake.”
8. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “An Ocean of Tales Until the Shores of Home.”
9. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “Spirited Away.”
10. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “In Celebration of Spring.”
11. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “A Listless Dawn.”
12. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Patience of Trees.”
13. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Garden of Whispered Wishes.”
14. Photo: by Kirsty Mitchell. “The Candy Cane Witch.”