This series of images was made on a road trip in the western United States in 2001, during the artist’s honeymoon.  The photographs show entire nights’ sleep in budget motels in California, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, Nevada and Washington State.

Using 8–hour exposures the night–long shots record the movement of the sleeping figures as vapour trails over the bed.  This movement is set against every detail, in sharp focus, of the sparsely decorated rooms. Recurring features are in this way highlighted; framed landscapes; lamps and tables, providing perhaps a semblance of domestic comfort. The photographs were made using a custom–built large format (10” x 8”) camera, which was placed on top of the TV each evening. The following morning the negative was developed in the motel bathroom.

The earliest photographs made in the 1800’s by Daguerre, Fox Talbot and others relied on bright light and very long exposure times. Subjects had to sit perfectly still for up to 40 minutes. To ensure the sitter did not move and the image did not blur, special metal braces were made to support the head.  The technique used to make the “8 Hours” series of images, a large wooden camera and paper negative, differs little from that of the early pioneers of photography. However, instead of capturing the static likeness of the subjects the very long exposure traces the movement of the sleeping figures.  Modern photographic techniques enable movement to be frozen in a fraction of a second. In this series of images the process adopted allows for a relationship between time, space and movement that is strikingly different.