In his last creative period, Gábor Kerekes dealt with erotic and nude photography, however these images are not dominated by desire, sensuality or excitement but by harsh and ruthless reality. The wet collodion negative process he uses is in itself suitable to amplify the effect of the sight of degradation. The picture pair titled Dead or Sleeping, which allude to Hippolyte Bayard’s 1840 Selfportrait as a Drowned Man, depict the moment when the living being enters the unknown, into the terrain of death, with the relentless sincerity of a man waiting for the inevitable end to take place, but at the same time with the curiosity of the experimental photographer, the creator who arranges the stage capturing this highlighted event viewed from the outside, alienated, pre-arranged and with a high degree of precision. Krisztina Dékei