Going viral this week is an interesting project by German photographer Paul Schneggenburger, titled ‘The Sleep of the Beloved’.

Schneggenburger set out to capture what a sleeping couple looks like over the course of a night in a single image.

He set up a studio apartment, with black sheets to serve as a backdrop and candle light, to light his six-hour exposure, taken from above with a 4×5 camera.

“What happens to lovers while they are sleeping? Is it a sleeping just next to each other, each on his own, or is there a sharing of certain places or emotions? Is it a nocturnal lovers’ dance, maybe a kind of unaware performed tenderness, or does one turn the back on each other? Is there a conjunction with the other, with one’s self?”

Schneggenburger will be exhibiting these images at the Anzenberger Gallery in Vienna starting on February 5, 2013.