Dreams That Money Can Buy is as much a literal statement as being the title of a 1950s movie by Surrealist Hans Richter. While the garments in the shoot are tangible, in the movie, the protagonist is selling tailor-made dreams to neurotic and frustrated clients as a business model he created out of need. Dreams can be anything. Dreams can mean anything. Dreams are ideas. Ideas about realities, new realities, expanded realities, ideal ideas. No one really knows where to exactly draw a line between those ideas and confirmative reality is, by which a whole movement was inspired to blend the two opposing into one; the surreality. Though we live in multiple realities, universally I am convinced that the world needs the Dreamers. Dreamers are the ones that are written about in books we study in universities, the pioneers that went beyond what has existed at a given time, the ones that make a lasting impact and are an inspiration. The exception to the rule. Without dreams, there is no progress. In much the same way Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons serves the world with the beauty of the things she finds and turns into wearable dreams, her remarkable avant-garde vision for fashion spans over five decades to this day. With one exception from fellow trailblazer Walter van Beirendonck, all garments depicted are from different eras of CDG, selected from Otto la Rosa’s extensive archival collection and shot in the store of dot Comme in Melbourne, Australia.
Hannah Baum was born and grew up in the countryside of South Germany. Photography is a tool to compose a hybrid of her passions: the feminine, the dreamlike, the gothic, and fashion. A tool allowing to combine traditional analog practices with contemporary subjects – a mix of the old and the new. Influenced by working in fashion photography in London, as well as techniques that leave a portion of the outcome to chance, are part of the overall experimental approach. Featured in issues of her self-published zine Stray Dog, in group exhibitions in London, and most recently an extensive solo exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, as well as a collaboration with a Naarm-based fashion brand.