In the beginning, Métamorphées was a personal endeavour. Photographer Anne-Cécile Esteve played around taking photos of friends and family staying with her as soon as they got up in the morning, discovering that it was a complex and sometimes impossible exercise.

Then she had the idea of turning this exercise into a photography project on our relationship with self-image by taking pictures of people waking up in the morning, capturing candid images of the faces that people don’t usually share outside their intimate circle.

The sleepy faces, shot as black and white portraits on a black studio-lit background, deserve the same attention as the glamourous portraits from the famous Harcourt portrait studio.

The photographer’s friends and family, as well as strangers, took part. Anne-Cécile Esteve slept in their homes or had them stay at hers. Before going to bed, she set up her photo studio and prepared the lighting so that she could shoot right as her subjects were waking up in the morning.

Métamorphées touches on intimacy, capturing the brief transition from one state of consciousness to another, when the mind has no control. The body expresses itself, contorts, hands touch, rub and caress. It’s a metamorphosis, a transformation at the end of the paradoxical sleep phase.

As a witness of this fleeting moment, Anne-Cécile Esteve attempts to capture a bit of the fragile grace that lies dormant in each of us.