Sandman

“I spend these waking hours looking for the sandman.
I spend these waking hours looking for his master plan.
I’ll wait till morning, till he comes to my house,
And he’ll give no warning when he’s knocking me out, oh.

So sing me to sleep tonight, yeah,
And don’t bring me back to life.

I spend these waking hours looking for the sandman.
I spend these waking hours looking for his master plan.
He will be sorry when he comes to my house:
I’ll show no mercy till the lights go out, oh.

So sing me to sleep tonight, yeah,
And don’t bring me back to life.

We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.

So sing me to sleep tonight, yeah,
And don’t bring me back to life, yeah.

We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.”

[ Sandman – Hurts ]

Sandman is one of those Hurts song which I really, really like but never quite knew what to do with. On the one hand it’s weird, since I perceive the song as being about insomnia, which I can relate to. On the other, it may be because I’m Italian and the Sandman is a foreign mythological figure to me: so while I do understand the metaphor on an intellectual level as an adult, it doesn’t quite speak to me on that personal, visceral level as something from my childhood would.

With this in mind, I kind of always left this song shelved while focussing on other photos for the project, giving it a thought or two every now and again but without much luck. Concepts I considered included: two models – one being the Sandman and the other the speaker – interacting in an ambiguously flirty way, but then I thought it would be too much of a rehash of Cupid; a male model rolling in the sand by the beach or letting it flow through his fingers, but that sounded generic and not really relevant to the song; a male model in the sand with an horglass, basically a remake of a very old photo of mine, which sounded at least a bit mystical in theory but never totally convinced me. The idea of the hourglass, however, stuck to the back of my mind and came back in full force once I made up my mind at last.

 

The right visual cue I finally found on Tumblr in Riding Solo, an editorial by Garrett Naccarato which made an amazing use of grazing light to give just an impression of Thierry Marin’s jawline while leaving most of his features in deep shadows. I found that visually striking and thought it would work very well for my photo: having a human figure shrouded in mystery would leave the focus on the sandglass, whose shape would be very distinctive even with grazing light.

One thing I hadn’t accounted for, which I noticed while doing some light tests, was the sandglass being, well, a glass filled with shifting sand, duh. That meant the glass was full of microscopic scratches that would refract the light and illuminate the whole thing, which was even better for my concept. After the test shoots, all I had to do was trim my beard, wash and style my hair, paint my nails, and today I took the photo with some assistance from my mother.

So, while the concept is still quite loose, I decided to make up for it with strong visuals. This is pretty much the opposite of the approach I always had, especially at the beginning when strong visuals were out of my reach and I had to make up with solid concepts, but I considered an important learning experience: even thinking outside of my box, I managed to get a photo I love and am proud of.