Originally published 2017-03-17.
Art represents an experience
The staged photographs interpret remembered sensations and fears. They are not documentary images of external beings or a diagnostic guide to another person's sleep experiences.
Photographer Nicolas Bruno spends his days like the rest of us, but his nights are very different. And terrifying. 22 year-old Nicolas has been suffering from sleep paralysis for 7 years now, which means that he experiences his nightmares more vividly than regular sleepers.
Sleep paralysis can occur while falling asleep or waking, when awareness and the return of voluntary movement do not coincide. In it, our bodies paralyze themselves to stop us from acting out our dreams, but Bruno’s mind is awake and experiencing horrific hallucinations. This forced him into insomnia and depression: “I thought I was possessed by demons,” he said.
Everything changed when one high school teacher suggested he should document these terrors. He has been battling his fears with photography ever since. “This project has gifted me a sense of who I am,” he said. “It gave me the strength to persevere in life, to create art and speak to people. It gifted me art, and I don’t know where I would be without it.”
More info: nicolasbrunophotography.com | Facebook | Instagram (h/t: cnn, lostateminor)
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How Bruno makes the photographs
Bruno first experienced sleep paralysis at 15, CNN reported; the episodes came almost every night, and he sometimes avoided sleep for two days at a time. He shoots mostly around his home in Northport, New York, where he has access to woods, marshes and beaches, working alone with a camera, tripod and remote trigger, modelling in most of his own images and using natural light. He makes many of his props himself or finds them free on Craigslist. Recurring motifs include blindfolded or masked figures, dark water and flames that stand for sudden awakening. At the time he had been commissioned for several book covers and was developing a virtual-reality piece in which gallery visitors would lie in a bed and experience a simulated sleep-paralysis dream through a headset.
Sources: CNN Style: Nicolas Bruno, sleep paralysis photographs
Additional source: NHS: sleep paralysis.
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