Stolen Slumbers
At the height of the afternoon, when the air is drenched in heat and heavy with humidity, moments of stillness are a familiar sight in Southeast Asian cities. Often out in the open and sometimes precariously balanced on scooters or motorbikes, sleeping men appear permanently etched into the fabric of their surroundings, as if they have always been there and always will be. A nap on a tuk-tuk parked in the middle of a pavement in Ho Chi Minh City, a siesta in a hammock by the roadside in Phnom Penh, or a secret snooze in a back-office in Hue’s Imperial City.
These stolen moments of slumber bring a welcome sense of serenity; a direct contrast to the restlessness of city life mere steps from the view of the lens. This effortless manner of pause is somewhat admirable. The ability to draw inwards and surrender to sleep while so greatly exposed requires a level of vulnerability and trust that is difficult to empathise and strange to comprehend.
The grind here is like no other, and in temperatures that are almost always unforgiving — occasionally accompanied by a stubborn mugginess that, literally, sticks — when sleep comes, there is no fighting it. These peculiar displays of sleep capture a fraction of city life in the Far East and embody the physical demands of life here. They begin to make room for the wider story: the ‘always-on’ mentality among locals and the notion that to retreat home is to give up, and to give up is to lose out. To survive, sleep and consciousness must blend into one.
