Andrej Lamut
Mnemosis
In his series Mnemosis, Andrej Lamut explores an altered state of consciousness, a state between sleep and wakefulness, known as daytime parahypnagogia. He draws inspiration from his own experience of events during which he found himself in this peculiar mental state.
Daytime parahypnagogia is defined as a momentary episode that is dissociative and dreamlike, but unlike a daydream, it is not self-directed and is usually encountered when one is tired, bored, or engaged in a passive activity. The episode is usually accompanied by flashes of thought, insight or creativity, that are quickly forgotten once the episode has passed.
Lamut understands Mnemosis as the embodiment of what remains after a daytime parahypnagogic experience – the visual materialisation of the distant, inaccessible thought in one’s mind. Photographs from the series do not try to recreate the mental images seen during such episodes, but rather create the atmosphere of experiencing said mental state.
They carry no visual traces of time, space or a specific event, which suggests that they are not presentations of the outer reality, but representations of one’s inner world.
The viewer is left with an impression that what is seen on the images is repeating infinitely; a motive captured in a never-ending circle of its own existence.
The principles of the mental mechanisms behind the experience are not only portrayed in the images but are also mirrored in the production technique as well. Lamut uses infectious development, an alternative darkroom technique that requires extended developing times and continuous manual agitation throughout the processing. The process mimics the conditions that can trigger parahypnagogic episodes.
The image does not start to appear until very late in the development, but once it does, it can get overdeveloped very quickly, meaning that only a slight slip of attention can cause the image to disappear into black completely, just like a flash thought after a parahypnagogic experience.
Mnemosis is a wholesome body of work that invites the viewer on a journey into the unknown territories of the subconscious and helps create an ambience in which they can explore their own undiscovered memories.
Andrej Lamut was born in 1991 in Ptuj, Slovenia. He is a photographer working with analogue and digital techniques to provoke certain feelings or moods through his images. He thinks of photographs as physical objects, that are more than just carriers of meaning, but rather pieces that should be seen, felt and experienced. To him, the process of creating the final piece is equally as important as the image itself. He has graduated with honors from the Academy of fine arts and design at University of Ljubljana and has received several awards for his work, including an award for the best designed bibliographic/monographic publication at the Slovene Book Fair 2017 for his photobook Nokturno. He is currently based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, exhibiting his work across Europe.