All of that coalesces in this sequence, Last Dream, within whose loosely constructed, non-literal narrative framework a handful of spectral protagonists pass through some ancient tunnels and grottoes and then move through a wooded, coastal landscape dotted with discarded and collapsing remnants of human made structures. As viewers, we're meant to imagine ourselves among them, it seems, to think of ourselves as seeing not through the photographer's eyes but through theirs. This makes for an eerie, disorienting journey, for they (we) seem to move back and forth in time; some of these images, with their vignetted corners and mottled surfaces, evoke the look of photographs made a hundred or more years ago, while others seem as contemporary as the present moment. And the pace of their motion shifts continuously, which is no less disconcerting. Sometimes they race, so quickly that the surround blurs, disintigrates into streaks of light and dark; sometimes they stop short and freeze, till every detail of the scene comes crisp and clear. Eventually, they step past anything that might require urgency and escape, reaching the very edge of land and moving beyond it, into calm if melancholy haven of a limitless sea and sky.

There is something distinctly both filmic and musical about this sequence--a mix of that inexorable forward motion of any cinematic projection and the steady progression of a string quartet through the polyphonies and silences of the calibrated movements of a composition in a minor key.

Cole, who has turned a number of his images into slide projections for installations of his work, and has made one group of them into a film, also composes music, which serves as the auditory environment in his installations and as the soundtrack for his film. So this blend of the musical, the filmic and the photographic comes naturally and organically out of the work, rather than being arbitrarily imposed on it. Individually, these photographs stand on their own as finely seen and superbly rendered single images. Organized into this sequence's larger form, their interplay and resonance's make them into something else, something more; and by doing so, Cole pushes the envelope of the traditions he comes out of and still clearly loves.

The resulting bookwork transports the viewer - as if swept up in some momentous course of events beyond comprehension or control - through a suite of sensual and spiritual adventures in charged, enchanted places.