Copywriting & Storytelling. Yana Northen
about this project
The Silent Witness.
I am 57 years old, and I have spent approximately one third of my life asleep. When I think about that figure, it feels strange to realise how much of my life I have spent with my head resting on a pillow. Throughout all these years, it has remained one of the few objects that has accompanied me for almost my entire life. This led me to think of the pillow as a silent witness to human life.
It is beside us during the hours when we are most often alone. We sleep on it, embrace it, press it against our bodies, cry into it, turn it over and fluff it, trying to find a comfortable position. It is present in moments of intimacy and loneliness, illness and comfort, fear, grief, desire and sleep. It accepts us as we are, without judgement, becoming a witness to the part of our lives that usually remains unseen by others.
The pillow carries the physical weight of our head and body and, metaphorically, the weight of what we carry within us. Yet all that becomes visible on its surface is a trace: a fold, a depression, crumpled fabric. Even this trace exists only briefly. It disappears, giving way to a new one the following night.
The project began with my own pillow. For 21 days, every morning immediately after waking, before touching it or making the bed, I photographed what remained on its surface from the night before. At the same time, I wrote down my first sensations on waking and how I had slept. This resulted in 21 photographs and 21 handwritten notes — traces of 21 nights.
I also brought my own body into the project, photographing the familiar movements we make as we go to sleep: lying down, turning, curling up, embracing the pillow and pressing it against the body. I use colour negative throughout this sequence to transform the familiar reality of the body and bedroom into an altered, unstable space associated with sleep. The sequence begins and ends in negative, creating a cyclical structure that suggests the recurring rhythm of night, sleep and waking.
In the final part of the work, I open the pillow — physically and metaphorically. First, its fabric and filling are exposed. Then personal objects, photographs, notes and fragments accumulated over a lifetime become its imagined contents — an attempt to reveal what this silent witness might hold if memory could take physical form.
I continue to work on the project, creating a photographic archive of pillows that I encounter in everyday life. I photograph them in different places, spaces and circumstances. Gradually, the project moves beyond my own personal history, becoming an observation of this ordinary yet universal object.
This project considers the pillow as something completely ordinary and at the same time deeply intimate: an object that exists across cultures around the world and accompanies us throughout our lives. Yet behind every pillow is a unique, individual story of the person who lays their head upon it.
The colour negative transforms the familiar reality of the body and bedroom into an altered, unstable space associated with sleep.
Traces of 21 Nights
Inside the Pillow
I open the pillow physically, exposing its fabric and filling. The familiar object is reduced to its material structure — the physical interior of the silent witness.
Inside the Pillow: Memory
Personal objects, photographs, notes and fragments accumulated over a lifetime become the pillow’s imagined contents — an attempt to reveal what this silent witness might hold if memory could take physical form.
The Language of the Pillow

The more I explored the subject of the pillow, the more I began to notice how often it appears in the language of different cultures. I came to the pillow through my own personal experience, but gradually realised that it has long been understood as something more than an ordinary object we sleep on.
What interested me most was the repetition. Across different countries and languages, similar meanings return again and again. The pillow is associated with intimacy and private conversation, with secrets, conscience, reflection, comfort and sleep.
In English, “pillow talk” describes an intimate, private conversation shared in bed. In Russian, there is a familiar saying, “The pillow is your best friend” — suggesting a silent confidant, something you can tell everything to, knowing that your secrets will remain there. German, French, Spanish and American sayings repeat a remarkably similar idea: a clear conscience is the best, softest or most comfortable pillow. Danish and other European sayings connect the pillow with advice and reflection — with the idea that a decision may become clearer after a night’s sleep.
I became interested not only in the individual expressions, but in the way the same ideas reappear across cultures. Again and again, the pillow becomes a place where we are alone with our thoughts — connected with what is private, unspoken and often invisible to others.
The Pillow in Songs and Poetry.
My research did not stop with sayings and expressions. I went further, looking for the same meanings in songs and poetry. Again, the pillow appears at moments of intimacy, loneliness, fear, grief and the need for comfort.
In the old Russian song Vanya the Key-Keeper, the pillow and the feather bed are described as witnesses to a secret relationship. The pillow has been present and therefore “knows” what happened, while the secret itself remains within the private space of the bed.
I was particularly moved when I discovered the French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s L’Oreiller d’une petite fille(The Pillow of a Little Girl), first published in 1831 and later set to music. It begins:
“Cher petit oreiller, doux et chaud sous ma tête…”
“Dear little pillow, soft and warm beneath my head…”
The little girl describes how, when she is frightened by the wind, wolves or a storm, she can still sleep peacefully on her pillow. She then thinks of poor children without mothers or homes, who have no pillow on which to rest their heads. Before going to sleep, she prays for them, embraces her own pillow, thanks her mother and asks for one more kiss goodnight.
What interests me most is how early this relationship with the pillow begins. As children, we hold it close when we are frightened, finding comfort and a sense of safety in it. As adults, we continue to turn to it — we cry into it, confide our secrets to it, embrace it in loneliness or share our most intimate conversations beside it.
The Pillow in Rituals

A small pillow recently returned to my family.
I made its pillowcase by hand for my daughter when she was born, thirty-five years ago. She lay on this little pillow as a baby. Its original filling disappeared long ago, but the pillowcase survived.
Now, at a moment when my daughter is beginning a new chapter in her life, it has returned to her. I washed the old pillowcase, placed it on another small pillow and gave it back to her.
For me, it has become more than a childhood object. The pillow that was present at the beginning of her life has appeared again at another beginning — a small symbol of love, care, protection and continuity.
Around the same time, a friend told me about an old Turkish wedding tradition that I had never heard of before.
In the past, long pillows were sometimes prepared as part of a bride’s çeyiz — her wedding trousseau. Decorated with embroidery and lace, they were made for a husband and wife to share.
My friend explained the meaning of this tradition in a way that stayed with me. When two people sleep on one long pillow, even after an argument they cannot simply take their own pillow and move away. They share the same space and return to the same pillow.
This idea is reflected in a traditional Turkish wedding blessing:
“Bir yastıkta kocayın.”
“May you grow old together on one pillow.”
During my research, I was also given the opportunity to photograph a real Turkish long pillow, similar in form to those associated with this tradition.
What interested me was not only the pillow itself, but the meaning given to it: an ordinary object becoming a symbol of closeness, commitment and a shared life.
These two encounters — my daughter’s childhood pillow and the Turkish pillow — made me think more deeply about the role of the pillow in moments of transition.
As my research continued, I began to notice another recurring presence of the pillow — in rituals marking the most significant transitions in human life.
Although its materials, forms and uses have changed over centuries, the pillow has retained an ancient role: it remains close to the human body. Across different cultures, it has appeared at birth, in marriage, during illness and at death.
In some traditions, special pillows were used during childbirth, while a newborn might be placed on a pillow after birth as a gesture of welcome, care or protection. The pillow appears again in wedding ceremonies: it may carry wedding rings, support the couple as they kneel during a ceremony, or be decorated with symbols associated with love, fertility, prosperity and the continuation of family life.
The pillow is also present during illness, when its familiar role as an object of sleep becomes one of physical support, care and comfort.
And it appears again at the end of life. In funerary traditions across different cultures, a pillow may be placed beneath the head of the deceased or inside the coffin. Depending on the culture and period, it can be associated with rest, dignity, remembrance, protection or beliefs surrounding the passage from one state of existence to another.
This became particularly important to me. The same ordinary object can be present at two opposite moments of human existence — when a person enters the world and when they leave it.
And sometimes, as with my daughter’s pillow, it can return at another beginning in between.
The materials have changed. The shapes have changed. What fills a pillow and the way we use it have changed. Yet its closeness to the human body has remained.
From birth to death, the pillow continues to accompany us.
ONGOING ARCHIVE
Pillow Encounters
