Conceived in late 2010, MATTER began as a collaboration between the artists Bill Sullivan and Matthew Gamber, along with the designer Mary Voorhees Meehan. Together with the writer Peter Hall and the artist Jessica Eaton, the group undertook the design and production of an interpretive textbook to unveil the aesthetic overlap between art and science.

Written by Ralph Eugene Lapp, a renowned Manhattan Project physicist, Matter was the inaugural title of the Life Science Library Series, published in 1963. Utilizing the content of Lapp’s Matter as a vessel for reinterpretation, a new book was created by utilizing the thematic arc of the original book to highlight photography’s ability to illustrate ideas.

Reinterpreted in this new format, the second iteration of MATTER continues the collaboration by incorporating the work of artists and designers Caleb Charland, Flemming Ove Bech, and Johan Rosenmunthe.