The Guilded VeilNicolas Bruno made every card of the Somnia Tarot as a photograph. He built each scene, costumed it, lit it and shot it.
Nicolas Bruno is a surrealist photographer from Long Island, New York. From about the age of fifteen he lived with sleep paralysis. The faceless, hooded figures that visited him there went into the dream journals he kept through it. The Somnia Tarot grew from those journals. It was conceived early in the pandemic. The full series of 78 cards was finished in late November 2020 and the deck came to print through his own independent crowdfunding campaign.
Every card is a constructed tableau of handmade costumes, sculpture, fog and water, shot mostly in the marshlands, forests and coastlines of Long Island, with friends and family standing in for the archetypes and Nicolas himself often the central figure. The deck keeps the Rider-Waite-Smith structure of 22 Major and 56 Minor Arcana and adds a bonus pendulum board card. If you read with the Rider-Waite-Smith meanings, they carry straight across.
The Revised Edition is printed full-bleed on 400gsm card with a smooth matte finish, gold gilded edges and foil-stamped details, in a navy linen box with a magnetic lid. A printed guidebook of stories and meanings comes with it, along with an authenticity card. Every deck carries hidden anti-counterfeit measures. We source it direct and send it from the UK.
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