Sleep Creek
Dylan Hausthor & Paul Guilmoth
Sleep Creek is a photobook by Dylan Hausthor and Paul Guilmoth that was published some time ago, in 2019. After publication it received a lot of attention and appreciation from photography circles all over the world. When I reviewed Some Say Ice from Alessandra Sanguinetti, I had to think about this book. The images in Sleep Creek capture the same mood that is dark, gloomy and unsettling.
Paul Guilmoth and Dylan Hausthor are a collaborative artist duo based in rural New England. Dylan grew up in Vermont, Paul in New Hampsire. They met while attending art school in Maine in 2011. They make work that centers around the myth of place and the complexity of image-based narrative. Although Dylan and Paul have been working together since 2011 they only started making Sleep Creek in 2016. At that time they lived together in a cold house on Peaks Island. A small island only accessible by boat off of the coast of Maine. There they founded Wilt Press, and published magazines, photobooks, zines and cassettes.
On Peaks Island they began constructing the world of Sleep Creek, leaning into the mythologie of New England. They gave themselves the boundary of the island as a perimeter to make photographs.
In principle photography is mainly docementary in nature. It captures reality as experienced by the photographer. That’s how the Sleep Creek project started. It began as a traditional interest in place, a documentary of a piece of land and its inhabitants. But as the work progressed the borders of reality and fiction blurred.
In Sleep Creek Dylan Hausthor and Paul Guilmoth create place rather than document it. The images manipulate a landscape that is fictional: a weaving of myth and symbol. It is a landscape filled with trauma and beauty. The images are a gritty depiction of the natural world. The world of Sleep Creek is shown to us in the context of dusk and night time. Which makes the work feel sinister.
Images in Sleep Creek can be described as gothic photography. The photographs are touched with the spirit of the gothic. Which makes them dark and eerie. When you flip the book over and look at its back cover, you’ll see an embossed image, showing flailing figures in the shallows of a river bank, enraptured in some ritualistic reverence. The twisting bodies reminds us of events from old times handed to us by myths. It emphasizes the timelessness of the photographs.
Sleep Creek
Photographers: Dylan Hausthor & Paul Guilmoth
Publisher: Void
First printing published in 2019
Open-spine softcover, 17 x 21,5 cm. 144 pages
Shortlisted by the Lucie Awards for the Best First Photobook 2020