A NEW NOTHING


A New Nothing was founded in 2014 by Ben Alper and Nat Ward as an online platform for artists, photographers, collectors and curators to engage in purely image-based conversations. Devised as an experimental playground for sequencing and poetics, the site has grown into an active hive of simultaneous exchange and collaboration.

Until now, each conversation has occured between two corresponding artists. For this printed series we are expanding the conversational spirit of A New Nothing by inviting guest editors to create sequences across conversations, utilizing the site as an archive. Each invited editor also provides a written component, another divergence from the site, but one that deepens and illuminates the eclectic ways in which people think about photographs, both singularly and collectively.


Varying lengths, perfect bound
Foil stamped softcover
8 x 6 in. (20.32 x 15.24 cm.)
Open editions


No. 3: S*an D. Henry-Smith


No. 2: Dan Paz


No. 1: John Pilson


No. 1-3 Bundle

No. 3: S*an D. Henry-Smith

For No. 3, editor S*an D. Henry-Smith takes a slightly different approach from their predecessors. Relying on chronology to sequence a dynamic group of 38 images, and pulling singular images, pairs and triptychs from an array of conversations, Henry-Smith has created a poetic meditation on relational exchange and the harmonies, dissonances and mysteries that are inherent in photographic conversations. They also raise questions about the act of spectatorship that A New Nothing forces every viewer to contend with - what does it mean to watch private exchanges playing out in public? This duality between intimacy and voyeurism that Henry-Smith writes about is echoed in their sequence, albeit at one further remove, resulting in a thought-provoking reflection on the malleability of images and the subjective ways that we give them meaning.

Photographs by Katie Kline, Ariel Goldberg, Yola Monakhov Stockton, Kai McBride, Patrice Helmar, Jesse Wakeman, Alex Catt, Richard Higginbottom, Paul Anthony Smith, Peng Ke, Emile Askey, Aaron Turner, Ryan Arthurs, Sophie Tianxin Chen, Bryson Rand, Lexi Brown, Alex Nelson, Tony Chirinos, Dennis Santella, Jordan Weitzman, Dannielle Bowman, Chester Toye, Daniel Rampulla, Justin Raul Baez, Roger Richardson, Danny Sadiel Peña, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Lacey Lennon, Genesis Baez, Benjamin Berry, Naima Green, Zhidong Zhang, Boway Young, Ahndraya Parlato and Melissa Catanese.


No. 2: Dan Paz


For No. 2, editor Dan Paz has assembled a cryptic and haunting sequence of photographs. A strong and pervasive sense of anticipation builds as you make your way through these images, one that gives the uneasy feeling of having arrived just before or after an event. Ruminating in their essay, Paz speaks to photography’s ever-complex relationship to time and space, the ways in which our personal histories and ideologies inform how we read images, and the particular kind of longing for tactility and sensorial experience that often accompanies encounters with photographs online. 

Photographs by Aaron Turner, Eduardo Rivera, Nolan Ryan Trowe, Juan Orrantia, David B. Smith, Quinn Torrens, Jordan Weitzman, Emma Phillips, Joey Solomon, Anastasia Samoylova, Odette England, Mohammadreza Mirzaei, Jeanette Spicer, Daniel Rampulla, Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup, Jennie Castle, Simon Lehner, Natalie Krick, Eileen Rae Walsh, Leah Beeferman, Kai McBride, Jackie Furtado, Curran Hattleberg, Cynthia Daignault, Emily Madrigal, Peter Hoffman and Catherine Canac-Marquis.


No. 1: John Pilson


For No. 1, editor John Pilson focuses on a diverse and compelling group of portraits. With a nod to John Szarkowski’s Looking At Photographs, he writes specifically about each image chosen, striking a tone that is at once humorous, poignant and surprising. Pilson’s ability to weave together philosophical, art historical and pop cultural references into a series of cogent yet improvisational texts is deeply humanizing. As he states in his introduction, each pairing is “a writer in a duet with a photograph”, an attempt to find something that resonates as opposed to something “that merely explains or dissects.”
Photographs by Aaron Turner, Sara J. Winston, Patrick Gookin, Katie Kline, Jordan Weitzman, Nat Ward, Matthew Cronin, elin o’Hara slavick, Tealia Ellis Ritter, Matthew Leifheit, Eleonora Agostini, Thalassa Raasch, Joey Solomon, Lacey Lennon, Laura Hart Newlon, Ben Alper, Mark Steinmetz, Elizabeth Bick, Irina Rozovsky, Adam Bellefeuil, Jenia Fridlyand, Margo Ovcharenko, Joe Leavenworth, Dylan Hausthor, Roger Richardson, Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay, Jonathan Pivovar, Aline Smithson and Naima Green.

 
Sleeper is a publishing project working with photography, design, and text to realize artists’ ideas in printed form. While books will always be a core part of our output, we identify more as a studio than strictly as a publisher. As a studio we can cultivate a fluid and experimental practice that is more concerned with bringing certain ideas to life than it is about producing a particular kind of object.

Sleeper is Ben Alper and Ross Mantle and operates out of Carrboro, NC and Pittsburgh, PA.

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MOVES FROM THE ARCHIVE
Photographs by Aaron R. Turner
Essay by Terence Washington
86 pages, 57 plates
10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.32 cm.)
Open spine binding with a tri-folded and die cut hardcover
First Edition: 500 copies






MISPLACED FORTUNES
Photographs by Ross Mantle
Short story by Edith Fikes
164 pages, 86 plates
9 x 6 1/4 in. (22.86 x 15.87 cm.)
Hard cover, smyth sewn with a two-color foil stamp 
First Edition: 500 copies








A NEW NOTHING No. 1-3 BUNDLE
Three books, edited by John Pilson, Dan Paz and S*an D. Henry-Smith
Varying lengths
8 x 6” each
Perfect bound with a foil stamped softcover
Open Editions







A NEW NOTHING No. 3
Edited by S*an D. Henry-Smith
64 pages, 38 plates
8 x 6”
Perfect bound with a foil stamped softcover
Open Edition







A NEW NOTHING No. 2
Edited by Dan Paz
56 pages, 27 plates
8 x 6”
Perfect bound with a foil stamped softcover
Open Edition







A NEW NOTHING No. 1
Edited by John Pilson
78 pages, 29 plates
8 x 6”
Perfect bound with a foil stamped softcover
Open Edition







PROOF
Photographs from the Collection of Robert E. Jackson
Introduction by Ben Alper
Fiction and Observations by Edith Fikes
Proof, 1st Ed.





PROOF Collector’s Edition
 12 different custom color covers 
1 Original Proof Print from the Collection of Robert E. Jackson
$125
SOLD OUT


MISPLACED FORTUNES T-SHIRT
Bella Canvas, 4.2 oz 100% combed and ringspun cotton




HEADSTONE T-SHIRT — BLACK + WHITE
Gildan T-Shirt, 4.5 oz pre-shrunk 100% ringspun cotton


HEADSTONE T-SHIRT — GREEN + GOLD
Bella Canvas, 4.2 oz 100% combed and ringspun cotton



HEADSTONE T-SHIRT — ORANGE + BLUE
Bella Canvas, 4.2 oz 100% combed and ringspun cotton
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CLOUD BEANIE
 Blue-Gray short height beanie with an embroidered cloud
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