Susan kae Grant: Night Journey

Susan kae Grant: Night Journey
Category: Photographer Monographs & Art Books
Author: Susan kae Grant
Publisher: MW Editions
Publication Date: October 2026
Print Length: 164 pages
Language: English
Price: paid paid paid

Susan kae Grant: Night Journey presents nearly ninety black-and-white photographs based on the artist’s long-term study of dreams. For more than two decades, Grant has used photography to reconstruct scenes drawn from sleep rather than to record ordinary events. Her images include figures, children, animals, objects, and unfamiliar forms arranged in settings that combine recognizable details with deliberately unclear situations.

The project began in the early 1990s through Grant’s collaboration with sleep researcher John Herman. During controlled awakenings in the REM stage of sleep, she wrote down descriptions of her dreams as soon as she woke. These notes provided the basis for the photographs. Grant developed the scenes through staging, lighting, costumes, and props, turning brief fragments of dream language into carefully composed images. The process links documentary observation with constructed photography while keeping the artist’s personal experience at its center.

The photographs use strong contrasts and limited tones to separate figures from their surroundings. Many subjects appear as silhouettes, while small details—such as a gesture, an animal, or an isolated object—provide clues without explaining the scene completely. The images resemble episodes from an incomplete story rather than illustrations of a fixed narrative. Their meaning depends on the viewer’s interpretation, and the book does not provide a single explanation for the situations it presents.

Grant’s work also connects dream imagery with contemporary life. The settings and encounters suggest the effects of speed, uncertainty, and the constant flow of information, without presenting the photographs as direct commentary on a specific event. Instead, the images show how these pressures can reappear in altered forms during sleep. Six gatefold sections expand the book’s sequence and change the pace of viewing. Night Journey functions as a photographic record of Grant’s dream research and as a study of how personal memories and daily experience can be transformed into staged images.

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