Street sleepers is a project of collected images spanning 2012 - 2019 in Guangzhou, Chongqing, Hainan, and Hong Kong. Afternoon nap time isn't much of a thing in America so it wasn't hard to notice how serious of a practice it is in Asia. So serious it seemed that people were simply unplugged from their power source starting at 1pm. Each city became a place ofnursery level quiet and repose. The thing that always astonished me is how vulnerable some of these napping spots seemed -- on a concrete sidewalk directly next to a busy street, sprawled out between two plastic chairs in the center of an open air restaurant, or perfectly balanced on top of a to-go delivery motocycle. Each napper with only one goal, to detach from the pressure of their never ending work day and just breathe. It made me think of how sharp of a contrast street sleeping is in the states -- our immediate assumption is poverty, laziness and trauma (which surely can be the case, depending on the place and what's happening there). But what if resting where you are came as naturally to anyone as it does these men, women and even children? What if we could simply unplug where we are, take a deep breath, close our weary eyes and let go?
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