Photographing sleep

The more you think about the actual notion of sleep, the more bizarre it seems. This resting state is something so fundamental to human life, and yet when we are asleep, the majority of us aren’t aware of it. Perhaps that’s why there is such a fascination with how we look when we sleep, and the positions in which we unknowingly tangle ourselves. It is this that has caught the imagination of many photographers over the years. Here, in honour of Photo Month, we’re going to look at some of the photography collections that we feel best articulate the strange beast that is sleep. Ted Spanga Reputed to have pioneered the idea of sleep portraiture, Ted Spanga’s photography has recently come back into the limelight, revived by his family who have compiled a book in his name. As you can see from the images on the Telegraph article, Spanga’s bird’s eye view of his sleeping subjects allows for a real degree of depth and movement - you can imagine the people moving from one pose to the next - and shows that although sleep might feel restful, physically, it’s often anything but. Paul Schneggenburger Though he also chose the movement of sleeping people as his subject matter, Paul Schneggenburger took a very different approach when capturing it. Here, the Daily Mail shows the time-lapse work of the photographer, with his subjects lit only by candles. The effect is at first eerie, but when you look closer and see that the smoky entrails are actually arms and legs, the images become all the more beautiful. They almost show the sleeping couples dancing. Nicolas Bruno Known on the Flickr photography community as ‘thewickedend’, Nicolas has taken sleep photography to a bit of an abstract level. Nicolas suffers from sleep paralysis, and has taken to orchestrating scenarios to illustrate the kinds of scenes he is forced to face in his nightmares. In a Flickr blog post, the images are mostly surreal, but with a distinctly dark undertone - and the aged filter on top of the originals does nothing to reassure the viewer. James Mollison Though not an exact representation of sleep photography, James Mollison’s work looks more at the environments in which humans sleep across the world. More specifically, the bedrooms of children. This collection of images perfectly capture the surroundings in which these kids sleep, as well as a portrait of the child. As well as being a photographic achievement, image wise, the breadth of countries and cultures examined here is incredible – you can see the images and the stories behind them in this Daily Mail article. Photographing sleep