MISPLACED FORTUNES


Photographs by Ross Mantle
Short story by Edith Fikes

One doesn’t start by asking one and all where a treasure is. That’s an opener, but a better questioning method is to express interest in local recluses, scandals, missing fortunes, rags to riches, back to rags stories, murders, suicides, once-rich families now poor, robberies, and that sort of thing. Don’t be afraid that a good many people will think you a bit touched. They will and that’s ok. That’s part of the price of being a treasure hunter.
- H. Glenn Carson, from Cache Hunting

Weaving together a tapestry of photographs, original and found text, historic imagery, and typographic symbols, Misplaced Fortunes operates as a literal and metaphoric treasure hunt. Using the myth of General Edward Braddock’s pay-chest as a starting point, this lyrical book navigates three centuries of history, legend and lies to explore America’s colonialist ambitions, its obsession with progress, and the stories we choose to tell about it.

Rooted in documentary photographic traditions, these images are both objective and enigmatic. Through careful sequencing, symbolic connections are made, clues are left and a narrative path is forged. Images of holes, X’s, unintended cairns, remnants, and monuments are strewn throughout the sequence, constituting a kind of thematic treasure hunt for meaning amongst seemingly disparate photographs. Edith Fikes’ short story “Eagle Street House” provides further context and narrative specificity, but it also blurs the lines between fiction and documentary and undermines our ability to parse the boundaries between truth, myth and lie.

Searching for a treasure that was likely never lost to begin with could be seen as an act of futility. But Mantle’s pursuit of it, metaphorically, allows for degrees of surrealism and absurdity to emerge in the storytelling, attributes that only complicate the way that Misplaced Fortunes depicts Appalachia.

In the end, this book is a treasure hunt, a colonialist road trip, a study of road building, an anecdote about American expansion and an analogy for the process of looking that is the foundation of all photographic exploration.


164 pages, 86 plates, printed by Kopa in Lithuania
Title Guide printed by Conveyor in Jersey City
Hard cover, smyth sewn with a two-color foil stamp
9 x 6 1/4 in. (22.86 x 15.87 cm.)
First Edition: 500 copies
ISBN: 978-1-63944-336-9









 
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.

Contact
Instagram



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
SOLD OUT




CLOUD BEANIE
 Blue-Gray short height beanie with an embroidered cloud
SOLD OUT