‘Vision 5: The Vibratory Waves of External Unity’ explores the bliss and fear that psychedelic experience invokes. Objects, colors and patterns, built up through multiple exposures on color film, become talismans and transport the seeker to alternate realities. Grids connect seemingly banal, everyday objects, with shifts in scale and focus complicating the image. In contrast, photographs of singular objects within a void rise up sharp, clear and un-manipulated. Together, the distinction between what is real and what is unreal disintegrates.

In ‘The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead’, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) create a guide for the psychonaut to safely travel into new realms of consciousness. Following the initial rapture of ego-loss, each stage they describe of the psychedelic experience displays both positive and negative aspects. The images in ‘Vision 5’ are founded in the fifth stage of hallucinations in which the seeker experiences interwoven, underlying patterns of the universe. Disparate objects appear connected into a unified plane, creating ‘radiant unity’ and ecstasy. If one’s ego interferes, objects and people become plastic and lifeless and self-sacrifice occurs. ‘Vision 5’ moves through the dark and the light, with the acknowledgement that each contains the other and that one’s reality is contingent upon their perception. - Silent Face Projects