Ferdinando Scianna has always been fascinated by the sight of figures wrapped in sleep. In over 30 years of photography he has captured countless images of people and animals sleeping in the most diverse places on earth: in the countryside, in cities, deserts, corners of towns, streets, moving trains, in their own homes.

With this astounding collection of photographs - interspersed with evocative quotations about sleep and dreaming - Scianna takes us on his fascinating journey into a dimension of life that is at once natural and mysterious, necessary and disturbing, everyday and universal.

Usually the camera freezes movement, isolating a single moment in the endless flux of reality. Here, on the contrary, the stillness of the image is of its essence. Through the mystery of sleep, life itself - like the photographic image - is seen as static, as if in suspense.