Sleeper

Sleeper is a new photographic essay by James Clarkson, examining the relationship between cognitive labour, sleep and the permeability of dreams. The publication features a newly commissioned text, on Clarkson's work, by Alexander Harding;

'Days blur into indistinguishable copies, tasks repeat, agency dissolves. Over time, the tedium of work can stretch into an inescapable, unyielding rhythm, bending every other aspect of life to its will; so much so, that any disruption to this treadmill feels seismic. Just as you close your eyes, the thought of it lingers.

It’s within this condition that James Clarkson’s ‘Sleeper’ exists – it’s a record of many subtle insurgencies. Stolen moments of autonomy amid the oppressive uniformity of day-to-day labour. The photographs in ‘Sleeper’ feature a spectral figure caught mid-task, drained, burnt out. Ground down by the relentlessness of work. Lost in the drab labyrinth of the office, the figure has snatched a fleeting moment for themself, illuminated only by the mechanical sweep of the scanner’s sensor.'

-Alexander Harding