Sleeping Stories
2021–2025
Sleeping Stories began during a period when I struggled with insomnia. Lying awake in darkness, unable to quiet my thoughts, often felt more exhausting than being awake itself. Rather than remain in bed, I began driving at night with my camera, looking for isolated houses, illuminated windows, neon signs, empty businesses, and other places held together by artificial light.
I had only recently begun taking photography seriously and had just bought my first car. Those nights therefore carried an unexpected sense of freedom. I would drive alone for hours, listening to music and moving through streets that felt completely different after everyone else had gone home. Although I often returned exhausted, while photographing I felt alert, curious, and intensely aware of being alive.
The photographs grew out of that contradiction. The night could feel lonely and melancholic, but also private, beautiful, and strangely comforting. A single illuminated building in an otherwise dark landscape could suggest warmth without revealing the people inside it. Over time, I became less interested in documenting insomnia itself than in the emotional world I discovered because of it—a space between solitude and comfort, wakefulness and dreaming.
The title Sleeping Stories refers both to the sleeping world I moved through and to the stories I imagined continuing quietly behind its windows.