Ed Valfre’s Dreamland - an exploration

Ed Valfre,
Photographer/Musician/Writer

           Enter the world of Ed Valfre’s Dreamland, where Ed Valfre combines words and images to create the introspective quality of a series of elegiac voyages.

           He illuminates the viewer’s vision by making fixed images of things otherwise only momentarily glimpsed and not remembered or valued. This precise definition, the freezing of movement, -- something Henri Cartier-Bresson named the “decisive moment – and Valfre’s occasional brief commentaries create unique partnerships. There are times that music accompanies the works, serving to highlight Valfre’s skill as a musician.

 After the new works are installed on his website, the photographer/musician republishes his work on his Facebook page, which is where I first encountered the magic and was visually seduced into becoming a regular follower.

            His photographic inspiration came from Robert Frank’s, The Americans.  Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and William Joyce’s A Day with Wilbur Robinson inspired his children’s books, Backseat Buckaroo and Vacationers from Outer Space.

            “I wanted to create a story about a kid in the backseat of a car on a family vacation,” notes Valfre. “Everything he would see from on the road would become part of a story from gas station logos to miniature golf courses.”Vacationers from Outer Space, his second book, was a continuation of the theme of the never-ending road trip. “The main theme in these books was that the real world is quite fascinating and imagination can be triggered by simply looking at the world around you.” 

Tomorrow the Stars

The spacecraft was ready. The boys packed cheese whiz, jelly sandwiches and packets of instant lemonade for the trip. Tomorrow at 7AM sharp the journey to the stars would begin. Tonight it will be impossible to fall asleep.

           And look Valfre does, with an intuitive inner eye that seems to recognize the occult in the ordinary and the surreal in everyday detritus. He can look at commonplace sights that most people would walk by without noticing and recognize the mystical and the magical, from the sleek design of a modern fixture to the stark, contrasting lights and darks of a backlit window.


 METROPOLIS STORY

She had been waiting over an hour. Clark Kent was late again. He had been suffering from depression ever since Rupert Murdoch bought the Daily Planet. He was given hack assignments covering social events and human interest stories until he was eventually let go. His attempt at a blog about crime in Metropolis had been a complete disaster. It turned out, he didn’t know what a blog was. When he arrived she would tell him it was over.
Lois was going to restart the relationship with Superman who was having mood swings of his own. She never understood why a man with super powers would wear his underwear on the outside. When Superman didn’t work out, she dated Jimmy Olsen, but Jimmy was in love with Superman. In the end, she wound up with a cat… and that cat wears his underwear on the inside.

 

Ghost Dance

There is an old haunted ballroom in New Orleans. Over the years, the ghosts had observed many a soiree.  On very rare occasions, when the music was just right and unknown to the revelers, there would be a dance between the living and the dead.

           Valfre calls himself “an observer of the world,” as well as a storyteller and often wondered if it were possible to combine the dichotomy of the two forces. At first, he felt that it would be akin to “combining vodka and Silly Putty.” Fortunately, in the century-old tradition of the Dadaists’ original 20^th century manifesto that contained the words, "as beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella,” he went on to launch his website.
           “The inspiration was the feeling I used to get opening the morning paper and seeing Gary Larson’s, The Far Side. It was the perfect way to start the day with a dose of humor and absurdity.” He says that he wants people to look at his work and have a little moment of the world being funny or magical. “If I can make a few people feel like that, then I’m happy.”


Big Dreams (Animal Walk, Meteor City)

 Leland’s big dreams of a petting zoo had fallen on hard times. Every great idea he ever hatched ended much the same. He looked out onto the yard and saw the last duck and some kid in a face off over a Snickers bar. He poured himself another drink and cursed the government for his own personal crap storm.



Dreamland is a chance for Valfre to complement his photographs with a paragraph or two that trigger the viewer’s mind into traveling across space and time into flights of fantasy and fading memories.  “For me, I like it both ways,” he explains. I do many images with no text which can be found on the Dreamland website but the stories, as I call them, are a chance for me to have a little fun and express things I can’t do with the image alone.”

The bird flew Away
The bird flew away.
It had been there your entire life
and you did not see how truly beautiful it was
until it was gone.
- for Ofelia Valfre 1913 – 2008

           Valfre uses the Nikon D5000 for night shots with long exposure and images when he wants higher resolution. He’s also been carrying a small camera called the Samsung TL500 for about a year. “It has an excellent wide angle lens which can shoot under low light and a pretty good sensor that gives you an image you can work with. For the last two years I have attempted to take photos every single day and this little camera has made that possible. I take it everywhere. So many images happen when you least expect. Now I'm always ready. I would say at least 75% of the photos were shot using the little camera. I am really not much of an equipment guy. I just want something that is simple and dependable and hopefully my eye will do the rest.”



The story of DEATH JR.

It was always assumed Death Jr. would take over the job the day his father retired. He began his training by accompanying small animals to the other side, but on several occasions, he would sneak an old bunny or a sick bird under his cloak and take it back to the world of the living. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this kind of work, because when it came to walking toward the light, he preferred the light of morning.

 Writer’s note: Photography is an art that most think is easily mastered as it is within almost anyone’s technical reach, but the truth is, it resists all but the truly gifted.

(at bottom) View Ed Valfre’s Dreamland at www.edvalfresdreamland.com. He has shown his work at Every Picture Tells a Story Gallery in Los Angeles that specializes in original artwork from children’s books. He was also part of a group show of New American illustrators for children’s books that exhibited in Bologna and Rome, Italy. His dream is to create a book based on the collection of images and stories from Dreamland. He notes that he “currently resides in Los Angeles, or possibly in an alternate dimension.”

And God Spoke

God admitted mistakes were made. The moon was supposed to be so much bigger and as some astronomers had stated, Pluto was not a planet but an accident. Oh yes, and squirrels, not humans were meant to rule this world. It’s nuts how things worked out, God said.