Italian photographer Elido Turco spent four years between 2004 and 2008 exploring a mirrored photography world that remains invisible to most of us. By taking photographs of tree bark and then mirroring the photographs he captured, he discovered a whole society of “Dream Creatures” were watching him each time he would take a stroll through the mountain paths.

Turco loves walking the mountain paths of his native Friuli with his wife, and for years he would use this time to try and find human forms and faces formed by the bark and roots of the trees in the forest.

The catches, he admits, were few and far between until, one day, curiosity got the best of him and he decided to mirror an image on his computer. What he discovered was “a world of… fantastic creatures” the he had never realized existed.

To see more of these Dream Creatures, head over to Turco’s Flickr set by the same name. And if you’d like to browse through the rest of his work, check out his Flickr and 500px accounts.