To sleep, perchance to dream

Ferdinando Scianna has always been fascinated by the sight of figures wrapped in sleep. In over thirty years of photography he has captured images of people and animals sleeping in the most diverse places on earth: in the countryside, in cities, deserts, corners of towns, streets, More... moving trains, in their own homes. With this collection of photographs, interspersed with evocative quotations about sleep and dreaming, Scianna takes us and himself on a fascinating journey into a dimension of life that is natural and mysterious, necessary and disturbing, everyday and universal. Usually the camera freezes movement, isolating a single moment in the endless flux of reality, but here, on the contrary, the stillness of the image is of its essence. Through the mystery of sleep, life itself, like the photographic image, becomes static, as if in suspense. A member of Magnum, Ferdinando Scianna is one of the outstanding photo-journalists of his generation. His photographs have been widely exhibited and published internationally, and he has worked on assignments in Europe, Africa and America. To Sleep, Perchance to Dream is his first book to be published in English.