Dylan and Paul have been working together since 2011 but they only started making ‘Sleep Creek’ in 2016, when they lived together in a cold house on Peaks Island, a small island only accessible by boat off of the coast of Maine. They gave themselves the boundary of the island as a perimeter to make photographs. It began as a traditional interest in place—a documentary of a piece of land and stories of its inhabitants, but as the work began to expand they let their thoughts cross-pollinate with those outside the island, namely their families and the lands that we were raised on.
“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.”
— PAUL GUILMOTH & DYLAN HAUSTHOR
‘Sleep Creek’ is entirely shot in New England, for the reason that this was the only region that the artists knew. Even though the place holds a strong regional identity, Paul and Dylan didn’t want the work to represent or speak to a regional identity but to use the region as a backdrop for more unhindered ideas of story, myth, and character.
That said, they do believe there is something specifically inspiring about the simultaneous history and youth of this part of America. 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”.
Paul Guilmoth & Dylan Hausthor
Paul Guilmoth and Dylan Hausthor are a collaborative artist duo based in the woods of the Northeast. Their practice is primarily focused on photographic and bookmaking art; occasionally questioning the boundaries of both. They co-founded the publication studio Wilt Press in the winter of 2015 and together make work that centers around the myth of ...