I Woke Up in My Clothes

I Woke Up in My Clothes is the second monograph by the American photographer Aaron Stern (b. 1978), gathering color photographs shot on 35mm and medium-format film between 2006 and 2013 into a study of intimacy set against isolation.

The pictures move between close, personal scenes and the metropolitan and coastal landscapes around them, from Rockaway Beach after Hurricane Sandy to the vacant lots on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Stern pairs brief moments of connection with longer stretches of solitude and the decay that eventually reaches every human undertaking. Damiani published the book in Bologna in 2013 as a cloth-bound hardcover, 96 pages with 50 illustrations, including a poem by David Wagoner and an introduction by Rich Appel.

Stern was born in Washington, D.C., in 1978 and lives in New York. I Woke Up in My Clothes follows his first monograph and gathers roughly seven years of personal work rather than a single commissioned series.