Excerpts from the soon to be published Mathew Brady’s Dream Book. http://ransomingbrady-dream book.com Mathew Brady invades the dreams of famous Americans he has photographed
Mathew Brady: Mrs. Lincoln, the president’s wife, used to visit my studio frequently. Ordering me around, she would search out the best lighting to enhance her importance. She was a vigorous custodian of her public image and censored what she deemed not worthy of who she believed herself to be.
She loved clothes and seemed to subscribe to the maxim that such matters were not disguises but revelations of true character.
mary lincoln's tear bed 70x90 oil 09
Mary Todd Lincoln:
Excerpt at the end of their joint dream.
I visit photographers, no not Mr. Brady who is interested in the surfaces of existence, but those who can access other dimensions. My senses hunger for connection, new circumferences, and Mr. Mumler of Boston provides me with new opportunities. In my visits there, I have to climb stairs to encounter my own self-image of woman-ness, fertile as the moon, giving life to males.
And when I reach the top of the stairs, I encounter a familiar smell, dusty and pungent which seems to be waiting for me. It pervades my sittings with Mr. Mumler and when I leave I take with me an image of an old lady in black, strong in her past fecundity, with two gentle hands on her shoulders, loving and peaceful. There are others, but this is my favorite and I leave the studio at 170 West Springfield Street, and I leave Boston and eventually I leave even America.
But before my departure, I push Mr. Brady out of my dream and he awakens full of fear and consternation.
I get out of my mother’s bed quietly but with some dispatch and move to the corner of my bedroom, where the moon’s light is blocked. I have never seen spirits, but I have seen other people’s dreams. In the old-wet collodion days, I recall taking a positive print from a negative and being surprised to encounter a ghostly figure floating above the sitter.
This spirit-like image was also evident, but less so, in the negative. I sense that what we have here is double exposure, an incompletely cleaned surface of the plate then transferred to the negative and in turn to the positive print. President Lincoln’s spirit is a chemical action registered between the image and the glass itself.
So I get back in bed happy I have explained the phenomenon, but then I see at the foot of my mother’s bed the President himself, gaunt, regal, and disheveled. But I am awake- this is no dream- so I study this specter and he makes no move to leave my darkened bedroom. Then he is joined by three small boys who look disappointed when they look where their father is looking. Had they expected their mother, whose presence I left long ago when I left her dream? Or are they confusing my energy with hers since I had invaded (not exactly with invitation) her nightmare? The wallpaper in my bedroom begins to wilt, and a strange unearthly smell descends into my bedroom. A window opens in the corner and all four Lincolns exit.
