Sleepless

Finally – the fourth of four prints from the 2015 APPAs – Sleepless. This print is by far the most important to me, because it’s very personal for our family.

Wanda has struggled with anxiety and depression for many years. The first hints of depression showed up not long after our son was born. From then on, it was a bit of a rollercoaster, until the anxiety thing moved in and set up shop. She’s managing it, but it’s always there, and it seems to sneak out and grab her by the leg at the worst possible time.

One of the times Wanda is most vulnerable to it is at night. During the day, there are sights and noises and people to talk to and things to do… At night, you’re alone in the quiet with your thoughts. Nothing to take your attention, nothing to divert you from thinking about everything that might be happening in life. The way Wanda describes it to me, her brain jumps from thing to thing, all of them urgent and all of them important, and when she tries to get away from one of them another one jumps in her way. So she lies awake for ages, thinking about everything and getting more and more caught up in it. One of her defence mechanisms is her phone; playing Bejeweled or Drop 7 or Zuma or another game like that fills her mind and lulls her back to where she can go to sleep… and eventually she does. Meanwhile, I’m sleeping peacefully next to her. I’m a bit of a super sleeper, I can fall asleep mid-sentence sometimes and I

…sorry, nodded off there. Where was I? Yeah, good sleeper. So I sleep through Wanda’s anxiety attacks when she has them. She knows I can’t do anything about them, so she lets me rest.

I wanted to put an image together that told this story. I think this was mostly art therapy; trying to communicate a rich visual representation of Wanda’s state of mind seemed like a good idea. I sketched it out, as I often do. Wanda found the sketch on the iPad and left a little note of her own.

Earlier this year I arrived home (from the Queensland photography conference Hair of the Dog where we talked about art therapy, by coincidence) to find Wanda had decorated our bedroom to match the sketch. She did a pretty masterful job, with pages flowing off of the wall in a chaotic mess. It looked just like the sketch!

Wanda: “Hey, we can shoot this tonight!”

Kris: “Um, no – we need to do it first thing in the morning so I can light it with the morning sun.”

Wanda: “OK. So should we take it down or leave it up? Leave it up I guess?”

That night, I’m pretty sure Wanda sat bolt upright in bed surrounded by papers, while I slept soundly. Life imitating art – even art that hadn’t been created yet.

In the morning, we set up the camera pretty much touching the ceiling and looking down at us, and I photographed it by remote.

Post-production was pretty straightforward, there isn’t a lot there. Everyone assumes the pages are photoshopped on, but can you imagine what a pain that would be? The only significant photoshop tweaking was to shift the pages along the wall just slightly so they were right dead set in the middle. Otherwise lots of edits for colour and feel.

The end product is something I’m really proud of, because it’s our story. I’m glad the judges saw something in it; it’s great that something so personal crept over the line and (after a challenge) scored a Silver at APPA 2015. (Yes! Got a silver medal for a selfie!!)

One really amazing thing about this image is the way people connect with it. Nearly everyone that looks at it can see a bit of their life in there. Maybe they’re the sleepless one, or maybe they see that in their partner. I feel more connected with people after we talk about how the image affects them. What do you see?

Most images are collaborative, often involving a big group of people. I completely owe this image to Wanda, for being the inspiration, for the hard yards in set dressing, for being in it, and for critiquing my edits as it slowly became this print. She has a hand in pretty much everything that we do, and this one was no exception, but I’m honoured that she would entrust me with telling her story.