Trust, ownership and belonging are the key themes that Marko Vuorinen engages with in his latest body of work Sleepers NYC. Initially a website, the project now includes a travelling exhibition that features a selection of photographs and video portraits, all shot during 2008 and 2009.

The stars of the show are everyday New Yorkers who have been unknowingly photographed while sleeping in public. For some of the subjects/sleepers, the urban landscape becomes a bedroom momentarily or voluntarily, for others it is clear that the street represents a more permanent lodging.

Vuorinen’s work explores the notion that sleeping in a public space is the ultimate declaration of belonging to the city and an expression of trust in society. He says: “A person sleeping in public is irresistibly intriguing. The sleeper is both vulnerable and humanly fragile but at the same time obscenely confident. You just don’t do anything that intimate unless you have uncompromising trust in your fellow city-dwellers and feel utmost belonging to the city around you. Thus the sleeper is comfortable in leaving their fate in the hands of others”.

Although this sense of truth and contentment within the subjects clearly shines through in Vuorinen’s work, the question of privacy violation does need to be raised. Apart from one, none of the sleepers shot for the exhibition know they are involved; they are completely unaware that they have been photographed. According to Vuorinen, the one sleeper he did wake wanted to know what he was doing and didn’t much appreciate the photographer’s artistic intentions.

I wonder whether that particular sleeper still has “uncompromising trust in his fellow city-dwellers”? Despite this Sleepers NYC is an interesting idea that raises many questions of both privacy and the public.

JOHNNY W.A. MILNER - HT