ENTRY DESCRIPTION
From the series “FRAGILE”.
Wetplate Collodion Tintype Photographs
A photographic exploration of our obsession with presentation, the commoditization of beauty, and the incongruity of communication.
You are on a date. You are interviewing for a job. You are creating an online profile. We are continually in an act of “presentation.” Fronting. Pushing forward an agenda. Even at our most vulnerable our minds can’t help wondering, “What must I look like right now?” Whether by calculation, habit or instinct, we package ourselves to fit the space, the conversation and the relationship. I am as guilty of it as anyone.
At my debut solo gallery showing, the breadth of reactions to the work surprised me. I was hyper-aware of the viewers’ enthusiastic search for meaning in my figures. Struck by the seemingly impossible task of conveying precise meaning to an audience, I engaged with the idea of a clash between the beauty of those figures and the materials and textures of a pre-packaged world. The process and dialogue of artist, subject and viewer distilled into the assembly line of a shipping department.
The introduction of packaging materials to the work I do with nudes created a tension with the usual freedom I explore through the body. Sensuality was now being hidden and masked. Or was sensuality being co-opted, turned into the product of sex and readied for delivery to a voracious public?
I saw the tintype format lending a delicacy to the images—a reminder of how beautifully fragile our “products” are. The handmade process traditionally requires long exposures, and as my models sat motionless, their heads or hands or feet encased in cardboard and plastic, there was a sadness as well as a beauty. Fitting the body into pre-ordained shapes inevitably reveals the futility of packaging ourselves.

AUTHOR
For years Matthew existed in front of the camera. Modeling and acting were his artistic expression and what happened behind the lens and the lights was a mystery. Eventually, curiosity overcame him and the allure of capturing images took hold, giving him an even greater control of his imagination. Perhaps it was this time with the camera trained on him that developed in him a facility for motivating his subjects to achieve the emotional states, physical forms, and expressive nuances of his photographs. He is fond of the relationships he has developed with his subjects and always seeks to make sessions a creative workspace where his ideas mix with theirs to make fresh, collaborative art.

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