In 2014 Ben Alper and Nat Ward founded A New Nothing, an online platform for artists, photographers, collectors and curators to engage in purely image-based conversations. The exchange between two corresponding artists gives life to original visual narratives, where collaboration re-invents the idea of authorship and triggers a reflection on sequencing and on photographic language as a playground for experimentation.
In order to expand the conversational spirit of A New Nothing, the two founders decided to release a printed series, published by Sleeper Studio, by inviting guest editors to create sequences across conversations, sourcing images from the site as an archive. Unlike the site, words are an important component in these little books: in fact, each invited editor also provides a written contribution, deepening and illuminating the eclectic ways in which people think about photographs, both singularly and collectively.
Read our Q&A with Ben Alper and Nat Ward.
How was the project A New Nothing born? And how did you decide that the form of the website was the best one for the project?
Nat: Like most good decisions, it was born out of longing and alcohol. All joking aside, Ben moved from New York City to North Carolina in 2012 and we quickly realized two things: we missed each other, we missed working together on photography exhibitions, and we were terrible at using conventional means to keep in touch. The idea for A New Nothing came in response to a series of questions I posed to Ben over drinks during a visit to New York in 2014. How could we use the speed and ease of the internet to effectively shrink the distance between two photographers, between us? And how could we make something together that would allow for a longer engagement with images, something more akin to the contemplative viewing experience of physical exhibitions we had collaborated on before, something decidedly different from and more unpredictable than an infinite scroll of algorithmically predicted and delivered snapshots? And finally, how could we create a social space, an intimate space, for
photographers to play in public. Drawing inspiration from our experiences sequencing images in books, planning exhibitions, and the surrealist drawing exercise exquisite corpse, we decided to create an online space for people to communicate with a partner through the immediacy of images alone. I built a bare-bones WordPress site so that Ben and I could test the concept ourselves. Once it became obvious how much fun we were having, how exciting the simple experience of communicating in photographs back and forth in public could be, we invited other photographers to join in.
How do you match the photographers on the conversation? Do you have any kind of control over the process of dialogue?
Ben: We actually never match partners on the site. Often, we’ll invite someone to contribute, or accept someone’s submission, but that person is always responsible for selecting their own collaborator. We decided early on that it was important for us not to be involved in those connections, that the conversations would be stronger and more meaningful if we weren’t playing matchmaker. Beyond the selection process, there are very few parameters to how the dialogues unfold. The length, speed and content of each conversation happens entirely at the pace, and on the terms, of the two people having it. The three “rules”, if you can call them that, are as follows: 1) The conversations must follow a call-and-response format. One person posts an image, their partner then responds with an image of their own, and so on and so forth for as long as they choose to keep at it; 2) There can be no contextual information or writing, just images. The only thing you’ll find on the site underneath each image is that artist’s initials and the date that they posted the image; 3) Conversations that have been inactive for more than 6 months will move from an active section to an inactive one.
How long does a conversation last usually?
Nat: The duration of conversations varies greatly. Quite a few active conversations on A New Nothing started seven years ago with partners still regularly posting. Others last as little as a few weeks. Aside from our own conversation, some of the longest-running exchanges are Susan Lipper / Ed Panar, Grant Gill/Kyle Seis, and Joy Drury Cox / Peter Happel Christian.
What did you learn about editing and authorship while running A New Nothing?
Nat: Due in large part to my experience running and viewing the evolution of A New Nothing, I’ve become much more open in my own practice to the kinds of unexpected, unpredictable, and potentially very productive risks that come with intuitive editing and sequencing in photography. And, because the display of images on the site rewards a longer, slower, even analytical, kind of looking and thinking, I’ve given myself more time and space to reflect on and learn from both my own images and the photographic decisions of others. In a way, I’ve found that I’ve become ever more invested in the potential of past images to meaningfully inform and augment the instinctively fast decision-making of photography. All together in my own practice and in the conversations on the site as well, these ways of thinking, seeing, and making images consistently leads to new ideas, to unexpected sequences of thoughts in images, and thus to collaborative photographic authorship that ends up related to but wholly distinct from the output of an individual. As a viewer of work on the site, that potential for the unexpectedly meaningful product of collaboration is what keeps me coming back for more.
Can you tell me more about the printed series of A New Nothing?
Ben: We wanted to launch the printed series with three books because we thought it would be really interesting to see how uniquely three different artists would approach A New Nothing as a kind of archive. The shifts in tone and were important to us. In terms of a directive, we very simply asked three people - John Pilson, Dan Paz and S*an D. Henry-Smith, respectively - to put together sequences of 25 - 45 images, using the entirety of what was available on the site. Other than that, we asked each person to write a brief accompanying text. This could have been contextual, theoretical, narrative, poetic, really just something to help frame how the viewer might “read” their sequence. We knew we wanted to divulge from the text-less nature of the website for the printed series, in part because the authorship of editors and their choices are exceptionally important to these books. And each book is so wonderfully different. For No. 1, John Pilson focused on portraiture, nodding to John Szarkowkski’s seminal book Looking At Photographs. In the format and spirit of that book, he chose to write specifically to each image chosen, striking a tone that is at once humorous, poignant and surprising. For No. 2, Dan Paz assembled a cryptic and haunting sequence of photographs, one in which a strong and pervasive sense of anticipation builds as you make your way through the images. Their sequence was also essentially devoid of portraiture all together, which creates a wonderful juxtaposition with John’s offering. In their essay, Paz speaks to photography’s ever-complex relationship to time and space, the ways in which our personal histories and ideologies inform how we read images, and the particular kind of longing for tactility and sensorial experience that often accompanies encounters with photographs online. For No. 3, S*an D. Henry-Smith took a slightly different approach, relying on chronology to sequence a dynamic group of images, and using singular images, pairs and triptychs from an array of conversations. What resulted was a poetic meditation on relational exchange and the harmonies, dissonances and mysteries that are inherent in photographic conversations.
On the website the conversations are image-based only, but then when I opened the books I was surprised to find a lot of words instead. Why so?
Ben: Thanks! On a very simple level, we wanted the printed series to stand apart from the website. But beyond that, we were interested in A New Nothing being the catalyst for new pieces of writing about photography. Because the site is such an amalgam of different things happening all at once, it has the potential to generate a near-infinite number of unique sequences and written responses.
We’re interested in the ideas and authorship of the editors we’ve invited to contribute to this series - how they work with an archive of images, what they look for, how they think about sequencing photographs, how they might use these disparate parts (i.e. images) to make some kind of commentary on the medium. So while the books necessarily rely on the images chosen, the printed series places greater emphasis on the role of the editor, in the same way that a film director is forced to synthesize a number of distinct, but related parts into an expression of their vision.
Both of you are photographers. How did this help you in carrying on the project in your opinion?
Ben: Well, the project started as an outlet for Nat and I to converse with one another (in images), but beyond that, the two of us being artists ourselves has probably been most significant in terms of who we’ve invited to participate. We both have large, diverse and exciting artistic communities, and have tried to bring as many of those people into the A New Nothing fold as possible. But I do think a non-artist could have just as easily (and successfully) brought this project to life. The more critical thing (to me, anyway) is having a deep appreciation of and curiosity for all of photography’s complexities and idiosyncrasies. And that’s definitely not something that applies only to artists.
Nat: Exactly. And photography does so much that we are all familiar with: journalism, advertising, deploying bold artistic statements, memorializing, aiding memory, broadcasting identity, et c. I think Ben and I are often asking ourselves, “Yeah, but what else could photography do?” Given that this is a question at the heart of both of our individual practices, it was inevitable that it would also be the spark that manifested into A New Nothing.
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You can buy the books of A New Nothing here.
