THE SLEEP OF THE BELOVED No. 5 - #3/5+2AP Photograph - Limited Edition of 7

What happens while two lovers sleep? Do they sleep next to each other, each by themselves, or do they share certain sensations, places or emotions? Are they engaged in a nocturnal lovers’ dance, perhaps an unconscious enactment of tenderness, or do they turn their backs on each other? Is there a union with the other, or a union with the self? I photograph people, and perhaps the tracks they leave: intimate moments of sleep in a black bed. I therefore enter these lovers‘ private spaces. I ask friends, acquaintances and strangers to come to my studio together with one or two loved ones. They do so in order to sleep in a black bed, in a space that is illuminated by candles and where they will be photographed throughout the entire night. The space is neither deeply familiar nor intimate. The lovers trust me, accept their exposure and vulnerability. Some are nervous or restive and don‘t sleep well. Others report particularly deep sleep. I never enter the room where the lovers are myself. I load the film and light the candles, then I refrain from coming into the space until long after the lovers have left. I do not myself watch, I let the camera observe for me while they are sleeping. The negative tells me what there is to say. Is it perhaps a kind of passive voyeurism? I merely set the stage for something interesting and indescribable to occur – something that can possibly only be described by means of photography. I reveal in my own way that which normally remains hidden to the human eye. The sleep of the beloved by now comprises more than 120 pictures, which were created in as many nights over a period between 2006 and 2022. Each individual image of the lovers’ sleep takes the form of a single photographic image exposed on a single analogue negative. None of the pictures are digitally altered or superimposed from several pictures with image editing software. Each image has a different exposure time: on average about six hours (from midnight to six a.m.).