Licensed to Dream - Disneyland

Disneyland is one of the rare spaces where adulthood is willingly put on hold.

     Inside the park, grown-ups dress as characters, hold hands, cry during parades, and surrender themselves to a carefully constructed dream. This is not childish behavior—it is a socially accepted pause from adulthood. Responsibilities, identities, and social hierarchies are temporarily suspended. Everyone agrees to believe.

What interests me is this quiet contract between people and the space: a collective decision to pretend, to feel safe, and to return to a version of themselves that no longer exists in daily life. Disneyland becomes less a theme park and more a psychological shelter—a place where nostalgia, fantasy, and emotional need intersect.

Through this photo series, I am not documenting Disneyland itself, but the people inside it: adults who momentarily choose to live in a dream, because reality outside is heavier than we admit.

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Living with the land

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Between here and elsewhere