Bottega Veneta Presents "What Are Dreams", A Short Film And Photo Series By Duane Michals With Jacob Elordi

Bottega Veneta today presents “What are Dreams”, a short film and photo series by Duane Michals with Jacob Elordi. Shot in black and white at Michals’ New York home, the collaboration draws on Michals’ long-standing engagement with Surrealism to explore the unconscious, imaginary, and uncanny.

Across 12 images, Michals photographs Elordi in the mysterious, enigmatic situations that have distinguished his work since the 1960s. From a billowing curtain and a convex mirror to a tilted pedestal and suspended feather, the series stages Elordi with poetic props and motifs that have often appeared through Michals’ oeuvre. Several elements recall Surrealist artists Michals admires, especially Giorgio de Chirico and Réné Magritte.

In the short film, meanwhile, Elordi reads from Michals’ poem What are Dreams, originally published in his 2001 photo book Questions without Answers. The poem, which also lends the project its title, evokes the “midnight movies of the mind...where things look familiar, but not at all the same”. Michals has often incorporated text as a key component in his works, and excerpts of the poem are also featured across some of the project images, in Michals’ own handwriting.

“I’m very much interested in the realm of the invisible,” reflects Michals. “My problem is how do I make the invisible visible? Of course movie making is also a dream, and Frankenstein is a scary dream. Jacob understood exactly what I was trying to do with the project. He was right there for the magic and the mystery of it.” 

In bringing together artists of different generations and disciplines, the project reflects Bottega Veneta’s deep-seated commitment to creative dialogue and exchange. The collaboration also nods to the past and present of the house; Duane Michals shot a Bottega Veneta campaign back in 1985, while Jacob Elordi was appointed Brand Ambassador in May 2024.