The big sleep: a photography book captures subjects in slumber

Of her debut photography book, Like Someone Alive, published with Art Paper Editions, Dorothy Sing Zhang explains her unusual process: ‘I set the scene in the bedrooms of others. One is asked to be asleep, a squeeze cable release is placed under the pillow. The chance of one’s unconscious body rolling over and triggering the camera results in an exposure.’ 

The results are somewhere between haunting and peaceful, as unconscious figures are illuminated in various states of cocooning, or limbs sprawling. In a thoughtful accompanying dialogue with Nanda van den Berg, director of Huis Marseille museum for photography, Zhang describes this state as the ‘ultimate surrender’. 

While these are all consensual subjects, it’s complex because they’re consenting to a release of control over their image, in a way perhaps all photographic subjects do, but to be asleep is a step further. Layer on further the complex question of what it means to observe our own unconscious self, whether that goes against nature, and you can begin to understand Zhang’s interrogatory approach of pushing the boundaries of what imaging making means. 

‘About five years ago I was trying to realise a way where the approach towards the trigger would somehow be directly reflected in the image. How can the pressure craft the physicality upon the trigger that generates the exposure? I had this old exercise pull-up bar. I would physically pull myself up while squeezing the cable release to make an image. A step further was to somehow dismiss the awareness of the approach, so sleep became the plot but photography is the story.’ 

As Zhang notes, everybody needs to sleep, so other than a bedroom and bed that fits the physical requirements of her scaffold-like camera set-up, the subjects have no common thread. They are young and old, couples and singles, and some feline companions even make appearances. ‘The bed is a sort of uniform, it gave a certain strictness that I liked. Of course, it says a lot about one's identity while retaining it as a sort of communist spectacle.’ 

For those observing these typologies of slumber, it’s unnerving. The abandonment of consciousness jars with the put-together sense of self we all seek in our waking hours. While undoubtedly an interesting photographic investigation, Like Someone Alive perhaps has its broadest impact as a reminder that each night, we all drop the performance as we share in the essential ritual of rest.

artpapereditions.org