Sleeping beauties kissed by a camera

• Source: Global Times
• [11:23 June 29 2010]
• Comments

Bernd Hagemann, amateur photographer and creator of sleepingChinese. com, a site dedicated to Chinese people sleeping in public. Photos: Courtesy of Bernd Hagemann

By Ye Jun

When Bernd Hagemann took a picture of an old Chinese woman sleeping in her chair under a beam of sunshine, he didn't know it would grow into an obsession for taking snapshots of ordinary Chinese unabashedly dozing in public.

The 42-year-old German took about 750 pictures of snoozing Chinese during his stay in Shanghai from 2003 to 2009. "I still remember all the spots and reasons for the pictures," he told the Global Times.

In 2007, Hagemann, with the help of a friend, created www.sleepingchinese.com, an online photo album celebrating Chinese people in various states of repose. The website has had more than 1,750,000 hits since its launch. About a year ago, Hagemann also published a book on the subject entitled Sleeping Chinese.

Stumbling upon sleep

Hagemann's photography has always been an amateur endeavor. At university, he studied economics. He came to China as the chief financial officer for a German cleaning equipment manufacturer. Prior to that, he had worked for four years on the sports desk of Lippischen Landes-Zeitung, a German newspaper.

Whenever Hagemann had time to wander through Shanghai, he would carry a camera with him, he wrote on his website. He never intended to focus his photography on people sleeping. It started when he ran across an old woman nodding off in a chair in a doorway, the sunlight creeping up her body. Hagemann said that he didn't take the picture because the woman was asleep, but because he just liked the juxtaposition of objects in the shot: the woman, the cat sitting at her feet, an old bicycle tire leaning against the doorway.

Later he realized that he could find people sleeping in public all over China, often contorted into hilarious positions, which fascinated him, he said. His later pictures included a man curled up on top of a piece of playground equipment and a man stretched out on a row of shopping carts.

Among his favorite photographs is one that he took during a trip to Ningbo. "It was a hot, humid summer day. I went out for a walk during a lunch break when I saw a truck driver pull over. He dragged out a hammock, tied it under his truck, hopped in and fell asleep, completely unconcerned about the passing trucks," Hagemann said.

Hagemann divides his photographs into three categories: heavy sleepers, those who are able to fall asleep anywhere on any surface; light sleepers, those who need something to make their slumber a little more comfortable; and communal sleepers, those who sleep with people around them, be it friends, family or complete strangers. He has found all three in public.