While You Were Sleeping
By sam mackie
12 October 2008
I own a 7 day business in hospitality - it's a crazy industry that leaves you out of sync with most other people: while everyone else is winding down for a relaxing weekend we are busy gearing up for the busiest time of our week. When most others are sleeping in the very early morning we are in the kitchens preparing for others soon to be awake. It is always weird to watch people stagger in for their 'early' morning breakfast or coffee when we have already been up and working for many hours. They seem oblivious to our lives.
The same pattern occurs over holiday times. At really busy times like Christmas we can work 72 hours straight. The world really becomes surreal then! It's a weird back to front way to live and it got me thinking about other people out there working strange hours in other industries who keep everything running or who are get prepared for the soon to be awake sleeping population.
This series of photographs is the first in what I hope will be several night time documentary adventures revealing the night time world of night time workers who like me are also out of sync with the general population.
This is my local bakery run by a fabulous Vietnamese man, Vince. The smell of warm just cooked bread is probably one of the most nostalgic and evocative aromas but I specifically chose not to shoot it warm and fuzzy - as it smells even on the coldest winter morning. I wanted the shots to be grainy, hard and 'steely' as is the work behind the scenes in a bakery. I wanted the tone of the shots to match their serious and admirable dedication. These bakers start in the kitchen just after midnight and continue through into the morning. On weekends they bake nearly all night and then all day to keep up with the demand. Most of their customers buy bread go home and relax, never stopping to think how it actually got there or the lives of the people that produce it.
Normally Vince and his crew have a radio blasting but complaints from the neighbours means they now work rather silently to respect the sleeping. They are tight team working almost like dancers spinning around each other with super hot trays & heavy racks full of dough. The floury floor surface gives them gliding agility around the kitchen and each other.
The bakers are not used to visitors and they were shy about my presence for some time until the demands of the morning bake and the dawn about to break forced them to ignore me and refocus on the job at hand.
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