Sam Contis & Joanna Biggs: labour, motherhood, and Dorothea Lange

Artist Sam Contis talks to Joanna Biggs, editor at the London Review of Books, about Day Sleeper, her revelatory response to the work of Dorothea Lange. They discuss archives, labour, motherhood, and the somnolent figure that gives the book its name. In collaboration with the London Review Bookshop.

Thursday 5 November 2020
19:00 GMT, London
14:00 EST, New York

Running time: approx 55 mins

About Day Sleeper

In this book Sam Contis presents a new window onto the work of the iconic American photographer Dorothea Lange. Drawing from Lange’s extensive archive, Contis constructs a fragmented, unfamiliar world centred around the figure of the day sleeper – at once a symbol of respite and oblivion. The book shows us one artist through the eyes of another, with Contis responding to resonances between her and Lange’s ways of seeing. It reveals a largely unknown side of Lange, and includes previously unseen photographs of her family, portraiture from her studio, and pictures made in the streets of San Francisco and the East Bay. Day Sleeper will be featured alongside other works of Contis’ in the exhibition Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures at the Museum of Modern Art, February–May 2020.

To order copies of the book visit here