I wanted to capture this theme by creating an environment that generated a dream-like mood, however still implied the true meaning behind recurring dreams – stresses. And while not all recurring dreams are nightmarish or unpleasant, it is thought that a dream that repeats is usually your unconscious trying to hint to you that there is an unresolved trouble in your waking life. The subject is intended to look like she is troubled, and therefore set the tone for the overall image. 

This dream-like setting is intended to appear sort of hazy; a reflection of the mysterious unconscious that is replaying the warning of a neglected stressor in the subject’s life. It is deliberate that a dream-catcher is dangling from the questioning text above the subject’s bed. It was long believed by the Native Ojibwe peoples, that the dreamcatcher had the ability to filter out all bad dreams and only allow good ones to enter your mind. Hence came the traditional practice of hanging a dreamcatcher near ones bed. That is why I designed the dreamcatcher in this image to be broken. It is to show that it is not doing what it symbolically should be doing if it were otherwise not damaged – filtering out the bad dreams. 

The unresolved stress in the subject’s life is causing her dreams to recur. So the broken dreamcatcher is representing the state of her unconscious mind. The visual representation of the broken dreamcatcher hangs from the question mark to enforce the sense of wonder and mystery I initially aimed to convey in this piece.