Sleep Creek — Collaborative Photobook by Dylan Hausthor and Pia Paulina Guilmoth

Sleep Creek is a collaborative photobook by Dylan Hausthor and Pia-Paulina Guilmoth, weaving New England backwoods rituals, animals, and human figures into a dark, ambiguous rural myth.

The book constructs a world in which documentary observation and staged construction are held in deliberate, unresolved tension. Its visual logic is nocturnal and accumulative: smoke, skin, fur, mud, and water are registered with the same granular attention, refusing a hierarchy between the human and the nonhuman, the witnessed and the arranged. Animals appear only when being hunted; humans balance between an unapologetic existence and an abyss of secrecy. Colonial histories, rural labour, and intimate bodies share the frame without explanation or resolution. The boundary between fact and fiction is not blurred carelessly — it is held open as a structural condition of the work. As the artists write: "There are no beginnings, middles, or ends in their experiences of the world, nor a hard line between the experienced and the directed."

The book is entirely shot in New England — a region Hausthor and Guilmoth chose not to represent as a regional identity, but to use as a stage for ideas of story, myth, and character that exceed any specific geography. In their own words: "Colonialism is apparent everywhere, every square foot of woods has been tainted by something human, and every pond is always covered with algae. There is anonymity in all of their characters, akin to the faceless identity of small-town New England." The sequence does not move toward a single conclusion; it circles back through the same terrain, the same figures, and the same uncertain light until place itself becomes the central subject. As Hausthor and Guilmoth have stated: "There's something deeply personal about many of these images, but we hope that there is something more universal in the intensity of the characters and their interactions with the land."

Vivian Ewing writes of the work: "The town is quiet, the streets are empty. But if you take the road into the backwoods, you'll start to hear some noises. A branch snaps and there are voices, laughing. A few lights are on at one house and a fire burns behind a barn. And if you relax your eyes you can see that there are people all around. The folks who live further out don't follow the same rules. They have their own idea of what the night is for. Hausthor and Guilmoth listen to the people who tell them stories of birth and death and their photographs are remnants of those who live along a little creek that floods on the same day each spring. This book is the result of many days in and around the stream and a testament to the power of the myths that fuel the towns in the distance."

Sleep Creek belongs to the Photography Books catalogue at Lokator100, and sits naturally alongside work in the Animals, Plants & Other Lives thematic collection. Published by Void Photo.

About the Artists

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth and Dylan Hausthor work collaboratively in the forests and small towns of the Northeastern United States. Their practice centres on long-term engagement with place, using photography, bookmaking, and small-scale publishing to investigate how stories are told through images. As co-founders of Wilt Press, established in the winter of 2015, they produce editions that move between documentary observation and constructed narrative. In their shared projects, Guilmoth and Hausthor draw on rural communities, local myths, and family histories to question the boundaries of evidence and fiction. Their work resists clear resolution, building worlds in which each photograph functions simultaneously as a fragment of lived experience and a carefully shaped scene.

Other titles by the artists available at Lokator100: What the Rain Might Bring by Dylan Hausthor; Flowers Drink the River, At Night Gardens Grow, and Fishworm by Pia-Paulina Guilmoth.

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Void
Edition: 2nd Print — 2000 copies (1st Print: 1250 copies)
Format: Foiled open-spine softcover
Dimensions: 17 × 21.5 cm
Pages: 144
Language: English
ISBN: 978-618-5479-06-0