Rocky Schenck: The Recurring Dream

AUGUST 8 - DECEMBER 16, 2016
ROCKY SCHENCK: The Recurring Dream

The Recurring Dream, the new exhibition by the fine art photographer Rocky Schenck at The Wittliff Collections, presents more than 70 evocative images that explore psychological, metaphysical and emotional worlds, ranging from suggestive landscapes to scenes of people in various “found realities.”

In addition to Schenck’s signature black-and-white dreamscapes, this exhibition introduces color images that the artist creates by hand tinting black-and-white prints with color oil paint—a practice that dates back to the Victorian era and makes each individual print unique.

Carnival, © Rocky Schenck

Schenck’s photographs invite viewers to enter an otherworldly realm where reality becomes a dream and dreams become real. His images call out for stories to accompany and explain them. Film director, producer and screenwriter William Friedkin, however, insists that Schenck’s photographs defy meaning. For Friedkin, the images “arrive at a greater truth: a truth we find within the artist and within ourselves.”

The Recurring Dream, organized by The Wittliff Collections, is accompanied by a major exhibition catalog published by the University of Texas Press that features more than 130 of Schenck’s works and a foreword by William Friedkin.