Project Statement:
Created during a time of personal domestic unease, I made this work when my parents separated after 33 years of marriage and my wife, children and I had moved to a new city. This series borrows from personal experience and the visual language of the everyday in order to create a fictional account that mirrors my reality.
Photographs are reductions, distillations, half-truths, and complete fabrications. They can only describe the surface of things, while I am interested in the intangible: memory and emotional resonance.
I photograph with the knowledge that our place in this world is tenuous, comprised of little more than memory and story. Memory is fragile; the moments are fleeting and have to be wrestled into a permanent state. If we are at risk of forgetting too much of our world and ourselves, photography is the antidote.
Artist Bio:
Matt Eich (b. 1986) is an independent photographer working on long-form photographic essays about the American Condition. His projects have been widely exhibited and received numerous grants and recognitions, including PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch, the Joop Swart Masterclass, the F25 Award for Concerned Photography, POYi’s Community Awareness Award, and many others. His prints and books are held in the permanent collections of The Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The New York Public Library, Chrysler Museum of Art and others.
Eich studied photojournalism at Ohio University and holds an MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School’s International Limited-Residency Program. His first monograph, Carry Me Ohio (Sturm & Drang, 2016) sold out in a matter of weeks. He has four forthcoming monographs scheduled between 2017 and 2020. Matt currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife and two daughters.
