Sleep 2011 (click thumbnail for larger image)

Life routines change necessarily based on circumstances and the recording of those routines becomes a diary of just that of time. The Sleep series is a year-long recording of the midday rest time of my daughter. In a significant way, this naptime has changed my own schedule; it is a defining part of my routine. Everyday that my daughter naps, I photograph her sleeping. On days that I am not with her or that she does not take a nap, there is a void.

In the same way that the Subway Drawings were a record of my life routine in graduate school – the commutes between home and studio – so is the Sleep series simply a track of another life routine. In a sense, the naps compose the order of my day. While they represent a fraction my time – two hours of an entire day – and will last only a couple of years of her life, their presence is monumental in defining this phase of my life.

Her sleep also represents a paradox for me: it is at once so beautifully peaceful and so totally alive. The simplicity of a child at rest, exquisitely holding life, rest, growth, change, underscores our own temporality.