MOVES FROM THE ARCHIVE


Photographs by Aaron R. Turner
Essay by Terence Washington

Turner’s archival materials open questions but do not close them; they cannot be deciphered, but they can be speculated about. 
- Terence Washington from Making Light, Making Futures

Aaron R. Turner’s Moves From The Archive is a richly layered book that pulls from a wide array of ideas, influences and traditions. The photographs, which are a part of the larger and ongoing project Black Alchemy, re-present cultural and familial images, exploring them as both subject matter and material. Using the studio as a space for construction, Turner employs cut paper, projected and natural light, black cloth, mirrors, paint, oil sticks, cellophane and packaging materials for analog photography as building blocks for his images. The result is a formal language that exists in dialogue with legacies of nonrepresentational art in both photography and painting. Turner also challenges assumptions about what it means to be a Black artist working within this tradition – drawing a parallel between racial passing and abstraction.

This book highlights Turner’s varied approach to image making, fusing elements of still life, appropriation and painting to comment on the complex nature of Black American history and representation. Blackness takes on a multitude of meanings in this work. It simultaneously operates as identity, materiality, metaphor, history and color. It is also an allusion to the darkroom, where many of Turner’s photographs are made.
 
In Moves From The Archive, images, forms and materials are constantly shifting, being recombined and reconstituted in different and surprising ways. This fluidity in the studio gives the work an incredibly dynamic quality, but also speaks to the complexity of the histories and ideas that Turner pays homage to in his work. This process of rearrangement is an archival practice, one that productively undermines notions of authority typically associated with Archives. At its core there is a questioning in this work that seeks to challenge the portrayal of historical narratives and identities as monolithic rather than diverse. But there is also a deep expression of reverence too - for Blackness (in all its forms), photography, light and the myriad people who have left an indelible mark on Turner himself. It is at this intersection that Moves From the Archive achieves its lasting power and multiplicity.


86 pages, 57 plates
Open spine binding
Hardcover, tri-folded and die cut
10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.32 cm.)
First Edition: 500 copies
ISBN: 979-8-88862-304-6









 
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
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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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