A stranger asleep in beautiful morning light: Joanne Leonard’s best photograph

‘My marriage had abruptly collapsed. I was longing for intimacy – yet this was not someone I knew well’It is not an accident that the image here, Another Morning, suggests intimacy; I was in a state of longing for just such intimacy when I made the photograph. Yet the figure was not someone I knew well. She was a guest in a house where I had lived only briefly in West Oakland, California. I’d come to live there after the abrupt collapse of my marriage. I noticed the beautiful light that flowed from a window and touched the sleeper covered only by a white sheet. I captured the moment, and it came to join several photographs I had made over the years of sleeping figures, of my daughter, my sister, my husband sleeping in our hotel room in Merida, Mexico – even sleeping dogs, with limbs entwined. I work towards an idea across a number of images, often over several years.A goal of mine as a photographer has been to find ways to avoid the intrusive aspects of photography. Rather than going out into the world to capture public events, I came to prefer photographing family and people I knew, close to home, since there I could have a legitimate expectation my subjects might not mind being photographed. A sleeping figure doesn’t pose or become self-conscious. It’s as natural as you can be in front of a camera. But it is an intimate thing to photograph someone when they are sleeping – there is no opportunity to obtain consent. Photographers have great potential for being obnoxious. I am always delighted when an image reads with some of the intimacy of feelings that I wanted them to carry. But I didn’t have a complicated idea when I made this photograph – I was following my objective of recording things that were close to me. I’ve always thought of myself as an autobiographer more than as a reporter. Continue reading...

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