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I’m Alexa Ashley and this is Eyes Wide. In this episode we hear from artist and photographer Julius Töyrylä, who has been recording his dreams since he can remember. In 2018, he woke up from a particularly meaningful dream, remembering two words he didn’t understand. He inquired with linguistic professor Michelle Black and learned that the words were from an Indigenous language spoken in the Andes region, and also in his birthplace of Colombia, from where he was adopted to Finland. The language is called Quechua.

When he was five years old he was told by his Finnish parents about a birth sister who passed away before he was born. The incident left him with an eerie feeling about someone, somewhere, invisible.

In his latest photography project Black Book, Julius reshapes and analyzes his dreams with the medium of photography. His photos often contain a woman figure, usually without a face, and objects from nature depicted in a twisted and surreal kind of way. After viewing his exhibition at Taller Sangfer in Oaxaca City, Mexico, I sat down with Julius to explore the elusive symbolism of dreams and death.

Alexa Ashley: To start, tell me a little bit about growing up as you.

Julius Töyrylä: Oh, that’s a good question. We’re going hard from the beginning I guess. Damn. I was really lonely because I was an only child. And you were in the exhibition and saw some of the works there. So there was the picture of the woman sitting and she has the light in front of her face. There’s a story behind it, close to my life also. Do you want to hear it?

Alexa: Please.

Julius: Do you want the short version or the longer version?

Alexa: Whatever you’re willing to give me, Dear.

Julius: I want to give you the longer one. Ok, let’s go. Before I was in our family of now three people, I had a sister. But she unfortunately passed away after birth.

Alexa: I’m sorry.

Julius: Yeah, I know. And then I was adopted from Colombia to a Finnish family. And they told me a story when I was like five years old or something like that. But I’ve always had this strange feeling that there should be someone there, and there’s nobody. But also a feeling of like something similar, like the feeling that you have a sister but you don’t. Hard thing to explain; but anyway.

A few years back from here, we were on vacation, my family. In Spain. And I was just looking at the sea. And then, this strange dreamlike feeling came over me for some reason, and it started to get dark. It was like a perfect moment in a way. And then I looked at the sea and I looked at how it waved, back and forth, and I got this feeling that now is the time to remember her. Her name is Paula. And I was like, “Hm, what can I do now to really remember her?” Not just a memory but something else in a way. And I didn’t have my camera with me, so I was like, “Maybe I do an act or something.”

So, then I decided, as it got dark, I saw the stars. I thought, “Let’s be romantic.” And I looked at the sky and I was like, “I’ll go under the brightest star and I’ll get something from the ground.” Memorabilia or an amulet or something from that moment, because it was so strong. Then I started to walk, like five kilometers away. Then I got to the spot, I was looking up and was like “This is it.” It was like a beach, a rocky beach.

And so I put my hand down and got something from the ground. It was like a little stone. But what is strange to me at least is that the stone was a little heart-shaped. I’m not making this up! It felt like it had a lot of emotion. It was a green one. I got it back to Finland. It was 2019, so I started working with this project “Black Book” in 2018, so just a year later this happened. And so I went to Finland and thought, “Now I have the rock in my bag, incorporate that into my work.”

In my exhibition, the woman with the light in her face but also the rock. I also made the portrait of my friend back in Finland. And the reason for the light, for not seeing the model’s face is because some of my dreams are really abstract. And there’s these really strong dreams that have this—it’s hard to explain—but a strong feeling behind them. And in those dreams there’s a woman figure—for some reason, she never has a face. So that’s the reason behind that series of photos.

I also brought that stone with me there. So it’s in the corner of the exhibition there. That’s the story behind that picture and also what it was like growing up, because I always had that thought in my head. I had never done any acts towards it. Just now, when I’m grown up, I’ve started to make art from the personal stuff.

Ugh, that was so hard to explain, but I did it! Thanks for asking; we’re going personal straight away.

Alexa: So, you were told when you were five about your sister? You said you had the feeling like there should have been someone there. Did you have that before you were five, if you can remember?

Julius: I guess between five and seven, for some reason, because those are the ages when I remember little glimpses of life. I guess everybody has that first memory. The first memory when you became conscious in a way. I guess you have had one of those also, haven’t you? Do you remember? So I guess my first memory was from seven years old, but I remember because my mom and dad told me that when I was five. But I guess I started to think about it when I was seven, because I don’t remember things before that.

Alexa: And this was your adoptive family who told you about your sister?

Julius: It was my Finnish family. So my adopted thing was—I was given away by my biological family. Not an orphanage spot, but kind of like that, like a child group home. And I got some papers with it—for example, the reason and stuff like that, which shortly said that the family in Colombia didn’t have the resources or finances, they couldn’t have just one more child. They decided to go adoption. But I have a picture of my mom, and the most amazing thing is she looks exactly like me. The photo is so cool because it’s like a bad photocopy, but it looks just like me, straight up. Yeah, it’s fun.

Alexa: Were you told at the same time that you were adopted that you had a sister, or were they different times?

Julius: I can’t remember. It feels like the adoption thing, it feels like a traumatic thing in a way, because it’s so different from everyone else’s lives, at least back in Finland. So I guess it has stuck to me more than with my sister. I also had this natural feeling towards death. I have always thought about death in a certain way, from when I was a small child. And I’m not sure if it’s something to do with a traumatic perception of that adoption.

For example, I was really close to my grand-grandmother, and when she died I remember really vividly that funeral because everyone was crying, but I didn’t cry. And it’s just a child thing that I didn’t know what was going on. Being honest, I remember I knew what was going on. I knew she was gone forever, but somehow it didn’t affect me in that way that I would cry.

In a way I was kind of happy for her. And it’s really strange because I was so young. Like seven, eight years old at that time. But that thing has followed me into adulthood also.

Alexa: Sometimes I feel like people have a natural ability to feel closer to people or things after they’ve passed. Do you feel that?

Julius: Yeah I think I do feel that. That’s a good way of putting it, that is. I’m not sure if it comes naturally to people, but it feels like it comes naturally to me. And I’ve always made imaginary stories in my head, like what happens to my ghost when I die, and stuff like that, from a young age. So I guess every child has a vivid imaginary world, but that was my world. Filled with dead loved ones, in a way. Sounds like I’m a really morbid person. Death! From the darkness of Finland, you know?

**“Every child has a vivid imaginary world, but that was my world. Filled with dead loved ones.”**
—Julius Töyrylä

Alexa: I kind of see a similarity between your latest explorations in dreams and death. It’s seemingly a state that is just as real as this one, at least it feels that way when we’re there. Do you feel that resonance between dreams and death?

Julius: Yes I do. There’s an anecdote from—I can’t remember the book right now—that when a person goes to sleep, they die in a way. They enter another realm of the human psyche—you could say it that way. And I have had that same feeling. And I was a really anxious kid, and anxious to this day. I have also had this anxious feeling when I close my eyes because it’s not static, I always see something going on. For some reason, from a young age, that was really important to me.

Alexa: What do you see?

Julius: I see these little—I call them particles or something—but particles of different colors and they just move in different ways. And sometimes I have the sensation of smoke, of smoke coming to me and then going away. And there’s some red incorporated, some red color, I guess that comes from the eyelids.

But for me, there is a strong connection between death, dreams and photography because the most famous philosopher who ever wrote something about photography was Roland Barthes. One of the things he said that stuck with me, is that photography is the closest art form to death, because every time you take a photo and look at it, you realize that this thing will pass away some day, will be dead some day.* The realization for him came from the photos of his family, his mother. And he realized that there’s death always in the photograph. That’s a really interesting fact for me. And I’ve always thought that when I look at photos—even if it’s just a photo on Instagram. But if you really think about it, “Oh my god this will pass some day.”

Alexa: Or it already has.

Julius: Or it already has of course. But this whole world will be over some day.

Alexa: You started recording them in 2014?

Julius: Yes, I started pretty late. The work is really inspired from the Jungian psychology. That part of psychology, at least for me, if you read it in a certain way, is really esoteric. And that is something I feel that dreams are. For example, I’ve read Freud but it’s too analytical for me, and that sex drive thing is something that I can’t wrap my head around. And I’m not a scholar in that field. But when I look at it with artistic eyes, I found so much more ground to walk on from the Jungian field.

Alexa: Can I read a part of your words from your little Black Book?

Julius: You may.

Alexa: I really enjoyed the copy and text that went with your exhibition a lot. It was part of the reason I was really drawn to your work, and the intentionality behind it is really beautiful.

Julius: Thank you. I want to say so much credit goes to Anna and Dylan who helped me with the english translation, so thank you.

Alexa: So you’re talking about one dream you saw in 2018. And you say, “In this dream I found myself in an unknown mountain area that was partly a place from my childhood home in Finland. Before waking up I discovered a rural parking lot and heard a song. After waking up I recalled two words from the dream, cuni and cuncush. I left wondering what those words were. I had no idea. I discovered that roughly translated the word cuni means “I give” and cuncush is an equivalent to a specific plant that grows in a mountain area in the Andes. I also have a whole new perspective of dreaming. I wonder what is this whispering of a dream. The one collective thing in the human psyche is that we all dream. That is a beautiful thing to think and make art about.

Alexa: I paraphrased a little bit, but I wonder if after that dream, and making this series of photographs, you’ve had any more discoveries about what is that whispering of a dream.

Julius: It’s really hard to explain, because in 2018 I started the journey of making art from the dreams, and it was because of that dream. And it’s really closely related to my heritage also because the plant cuncush is growing in the Peru area, actually. And I’m planning to end the work in Peru next year.

I have had some realizations about the dream world. I still don’t know what it is though, and I guess I will never find out exactly. But one thing that I do believe in is the universal or collective symbols in dreams. Because everyone when they dream sees the same things, in a way. You can see a forest, you can see a woman without a face. It’s a collective thing in a way, because we all do dream those kind of things. But then the meaning is in the personal realm of the psyche.

What I want to discover is if a dream can show me something mysterious from the real world. That is the one thing that happened to me in that dream. It’s hard to explain, because I didn’t know what those words were. I still have them in my phone in the notes. cuncush and cuni. It’s really hard to explain how they came to my conscious, or my subconscious. How did they go there, but also why did they come? It’s so mysterious and esoteric to me, and I want to dive into the world of dreams more now.

And for me, it’s whispering—that’s the most poetic way to say it. Because “whisper” is really quiet, and usually when you wake up from a dream, the dream just disappears. It’s quiet. But those dreams that I’m putting in this project are dreams that Carl Jung called “big dreams.” Dreams that have significance to the person who sees them. They can act like memories in a way. So if you have memories from your childhood when you ate an apple, also you can have that same feeling but from a dream. It’s really mysterious to me. How come they struck so hard, those dreams?

I’ve only had those dreams like ten times, but I remember all of them. The most interesting to me is the first dream I ever had, and I still remember it. And it was when my great-grandmother died. And it was after I was told of her death; I remember when I went to sleep that night I saw this dream where I was walking in a swamp area, and it was red. Dark red or orange, but there were no sounds. No sounds. I was walking in the swamp, there should be sounds you know? But there were no sounds, nothing. And I came to this pond of water that was blackish, and there were forests around in the pond, but they were all dead trees—black, gray, dark gray. And then from the forest from the left of me, came this figure. And it had a black coat on, and was flying over the water. Maybe hovering over the water. It stopped in the middle of the pond.

And then in the middle of the dream, I remember something happened. I was pulled towards the figure, and it turned towards me, and I saw this face, like a white woman’s face. Really scary to me, and I remember it screamed. Screamed really loud. I woke up to the scream, and it wasn’t my scream. I just heard the scream really loud. And then when I woke up for, let’s say two seconds, I still heard the scream. I was just shocked. I didn’t start to cry, but I did start to sweat. I was so scared of that thing. And still to this day I remember vividly. It was like a story, a memory for me.

Alexa: Have you noticed certain things in your dreams since then? Are there common symbols?

Julius: Yes there are. A lot of those symbols can be seen in the work. There’s birds, trees, ground, the grass. Those kinds of things, at least in the dreams I remember vividly. Also that figure of the woman that doesn’t have a face, that’s one of them. But in the work, for me, it’s too naive to take photos that replicate the dream. I just want to to turn it into something else. For me, it’s like I go to my dream world by taking the photos. I’m creating something that is really close to a dream, but it’s not the dream. What I’m hoping to achieve, when the work is done, is to have dream-text, and the photos with it, and just see what happens. That’s the way I’m working right now. I don’t know how it will turn out.

Alexa: What do you like about photography in this work? Is there a guiding purpose or is it more a working out of something?

Julius: I have to say you have really good questions. I guess what I like about photography is the sudden magic it gives to you. I started with analog photography, and I remember I would take the photos and wait for them to develop and see them. That was magical to me, the process of photography. And after I got my first digital camera, I could see that magic right away. I took the photo and could see it in the screen.

It hit me that there is something in here. I didn’t know how to explain it when I started—I was 15 or something. Now, thinking about it backwards, it was the death thing. I just knew that this is something special and I can make magic with it. I can make something beautiful with it. I guess that’s the main reason I like photography. Not maybe more than other art forms, but it’s the most interesting for me.

Alexa: Why?

Julius: It’s because it’s so close, so personal. Every time you take photos or make a series, it tells the story of the subject. It also tells the story of you. And that’s really interesting to me. I see photos people take and I actually like to think more about the person who made it. How did they get in those situations and why? So, because it’s so related to the artist also. Not in a narcissistic way.

Alexa: As you know, I’m reading this book, The Dream of the Earth, by Thomas Berry and I was telling you that for him, it seems that our collective story really shapes our evolution and where we go. I’m wondering when you look at your photos that you’ve taken, what is the story about you that you get from viewing your own work?

Julius: You mean, when I look at my own photos, what do I feel?

Alexa: Do you think about you as a photographer as you do with other photographers?

Julius: No, when I look at my own photos I’m trying to understand the artistic side of me. Because I’ve always had this feeling from my childhood that there’s two people inside of me. It’s really hard to explain, but I guess you can put it symbolically. I have the waking me, and the me that’s not awake. Like conscious and subconscious.

So when I look at the photos, I also learn what’s the state of my subconscious. When I look at these photos, I feel that everything is really good, but not fully evolved in a form that I can fully understand, if that makes sense. For example, in this exhibition that has those pictures, I feel pretty good. I feel like I have the sense of romanticism, a little bit of naivety there also.

But I really like to make little things stand out and look beautiful. And that is also really important to me. When I meet people I want to be really respectful and interested. I guess it’s like a personality thing. I can see a little bit of my personality in the pictures. But that’s just for me. I can never fully understand what another person feels when they look at the photos.

Alexa: I’ve noticed your work featuring and elevating the ordinary; a rock, the grass, or trees. I’m wondering when you feel like you started noticing ordinary things.

Julius: One way to think about it for me is like what I was saying about the symbolism of the dream. When you see a photograph of the forest, in a way it’s a symbol of the forest. And what that symbol means to you is the question you have to ask yourself. That’s one way of looking at it.

I’ve always noticed the little things, I guess that’s why I’m a photographer in a way. Because you observe things that speak to you. That is one thing that in my opinion makes a good photographer. If they are really honest with themselves, they start to notice things they are really passionate about. And for some reason I just like to see the beauty of trees and grass and birds and stuff like that.

Alexa: What do they say to you?

Julius: They make me feel really calm. And in every photo I have in the exhibition, there’s a story behind the photo. It always had me feeling. There’s always a story behind the photo, or there’s a story of how or why I made it. And it’s really close to the thought of the dreams that I’ve had that are really impactful for me. So they way I work, which photos I choose, if there’s a problem for me of which one I choose, I put the one with more feeling for me when I was taking it.

For example, there’s a picture of a bird in the sky. How I did it was…it was shot in Japan so it’s an old picture. It was from 2017. But I was laying in the grass, and there was a beautiful Kamogawa River next to me. And I just took my camera, I wanted to take a picture of the sky. Just the sky, nothing else. But then, the bird just happened to be there. And I just took the photo, and it was like a happy coincidence, like Bob Ross would say.

And after I looked at the photo, I noticed there was another small bird somewhere in the distance. And I just liked the coincidence. I almost put the photo with only the sky. But for some reason this has more feeling. This makes me feel more amazed in a way, that this bird just came to me. And for some reason I have also had a close relation to folklore, different culture’s folklore. And the bird has been a big symbol, at least in the Western folklore. They bring messages and things like that. So it was closely related to that feeling for me. It seemed like the bird was giving me the photo. It was a coincidence, but then again you can think that the bird was purposefully there in a strange way. Not in a naive way but in a strange way.

Alexa: Do you have a way of telling what was “for” us, and what is “for” you? The feeling of, “Oh, this bird was for me and gave this photo to me.” How do you feel that?

Julius: It’s maybe because of frequency. I feel like if I’m in the right frequency with the world, these types of things are happening. If I’m aware of them, they might happen. Or, if my subconscious takes over, if I’m really calm and relaxed. Almost every time in those situations something magical happens.

Alexa: That’s powerful. Do you have ways of getting to that feeling of relaxed? Maybe we can call it no-mind.

Julius: Yeah, we can call it that.

Alexa: Especially for someone who deals with, and has dealt with anxiety.

Julius: For example, it’s like meditation of course. It has helped me be more with it, with the feeling. For me, it cannot be always on. For me, at least, in this time and space. It happens when it happens. You can’t force it. The happy coincidence is the best way to describe it, two powerful words. It’s almost like magic for me, because I don’t know how it happens. It feels like the world or something around me is giving me a gift, if I can just close my mind from all the thoughts that are not important. It feels like if I do that, the world will give me a gift. And for me, because I love making art, it comes in the form of art. That’s the best way of describing it.

Alexa: Does the art also give you anything after it’s made? Or is it mainly that the art is the gift itself?

Julius: It’s hard to explain. For me, it feels like when I make the artwork. After that, it’s almost like a child. It just hangs in the world and does its own thing. Part of it is not situated to me. But the best thing I get from art—well the analytical side of me thinks that if someone buys the art, it’s always nice—but when we get down to the core of the thing, I love when someone says to me that they love the art. Or gets in touch with me and says that they were really touched by it. That’s intimate conversation, in a way. I’ve had a conversation with myself; made the art. No words were needed, in a way, but I communicated with someone.

If someone puts the effort of writing or telling me something, it feels like having a really intimate relationship with that person. The fun in it is that I might never see this person, they might just write me something, and I never meet them. But we have a mutual understanding and that’s the best thing in art. It brings—to say it naively—it brings us together. I really love that side of making art.

Alexa: That’s beautiful. Has it helped with feelings of loneliness from childhood?

Julius: Yeah, actually here in Oaxaca it has. Because I guess people are more in tune with the realism of the art world. People are really open about it, they want to talk and understand. I haven’t had that feeling back in the European art world.

There’s a train of thought also with the book you’re reading (The Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry). Every big culture—if we broke it into pieces, not just the Western world but the whole world—every culture has its own “whole world,” or what was the word he [Thomas Berry] was talking about there?

Alexa: The collective story?

Julius: Yeah, and for me it’s changing. It’s a story that’s changing all the time. In the Western world, the collective story is so different it takes over people. There’s a different train of thought when you go to an art gallery for example. It feels like that to me. It’s different here in Oaxaca. I can’t speak from the Mexican perspective, but in Oaxaca I’ve had warmth here. It feels like that to me, more warmth.

Alexa: I’m wondering in your next works or art forms; is there something you feel called to explore next or further?

Julius: Yes, there is. I want to make art—I want to make a documentary about the adoption thing. Because I haven’t been in Colombia since the adoption. But I guess that work is just going to be for me. So I will make an art series or something about it. But it will be so personal I might never show it to anyone. But I’m going to make one of those. And after that I don’t know. I’m really interested in cultural research, so I might do something around that. I love researching things with cameras, so maybe I’ll do something closer to research but I haven’t decided yet. But after Black Book is done, I will continue in the realm of dreams because it’s so wide. The theme is so wide, there’s so much to learn about it, and there’s a lot of other things you can do. For example, performance or paintings. I guess the next thing for me might be a performance.

Alexa: Yeah, I remember you saying in the text that dreams are kind of like acts or plays.

Julius: Yeah, they are, for me at least. I can’t speak for anybody else. But for me they are like that. And every big dream I’ve had, it’s a play. It has a start, a middle, and some kind of an ending. It feels like it has drama. It’s weird, but it’s the way.

Alexa: That would be amazing to see your interpretation of that. I was wondering if you were to tell somebody that has experienced trauma from adoption, what would you tell them? What would be helpful to heal from that?

Julius: Well, there’s so much rejection in the human soul. If something bad happens, you reject it for some reason. And that is not the answer for me. The answer has been going to the thing. You go towards it, and sword fight it in a way. And you will be victorious if you do that. It’s just a thought. And you are you, you can win your thoughts and always think in another way. And also compassion. You have to be compassionate to the thing, and also to yourself. Because only adopted people know how it feels to be adopted.

For me it doesn’t matter why you were adopted. It’s a story. But in the end it doesn’t matter. I was lucky because I had really good parents. My family is really loving. But I want to say, you’re not alone. Don’t be too afraid of that thing, because I was so alone in the way that nobody could understand how it felt. But there’s compassionate people in the world, and I’m one of them, so you’re not alone. And art making is a good way of dealing with anxiety and problems.

*“Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.”—Roland Barthes / Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography / Quote referenced by Julius Töyrylä

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The Elusive Symbolism of Dreams & Death—Julius Töyrylä