Postcards from Disneyland

In 2015, SF MOMAs Open Space commissioned Kate Durbin and artist Rollin Leonard to create an artwork. They decided to conjure cryptic new Disney characters (ghosts) in Durbin’s home studio in Pasadena, then sneak projection equipment and slides of those characters into Disneyland park, where they projected the ghosts onto the surfaces of iconic structures like the Matternhorn and the inside of Monstro’s mouth, and rephotographed them, turning them into a series of postcards.

All of Durbin’s and Leonard’s “Postcards from Disneyland” were taken in real time; none are digitally altered or photoshopped.

Curiously, no one seemed to notice these hauntings as they were happening, perhaps accepting them as an organic part of the park. In Main Street, a lamp forever burns in Walt’s apartment just above the fire station, where his ghost is supposed to reside. With its nostalgia for a past that never quite was, and a tomorrow that will never come, Disneyland is a home for ghosts.