Isabella Berr: Walking Dreams: Jürgen B. Tesch

The Walking Dreams series by German photographic artist Isabella Berr presents dream sequences captured in time. Taken in public spaces and incorporating chance onlookers as unwitting participants, Berr’s photographs are nevertheless meticulously composed yet deliberately hazy, evoking in viewers the uncanny feeling that they are looking at elusive but familiar faces or places.
           
The first book to focus on a series of her photographs, Isabella Berr: Walking Dreams explores Berr’s distinctive technique of distancing herself from photography as a familiar, technical means of reproducing reality, a practice that places her work more comfortably within the stylistic conventions of painting. Demonstrating a compelling commingling of the two forms, the photographs included here create a sense of mystery and exude a quiet intensity that have made her work popular with audiences worldwide. Adding context to Berr’s photographs is an essay by Holden Luntz that sheds light on the works’ ability to produce strong emotional reactions in viewers.