Exhibit by Matthew Hamon

Matthew Hamon’s selected photographs are from an ongoing project that includes landscapes, portraits, and architectural images of the rural American West, that contemplate the drosscape between industry and wildlands, progress and stasis.

Jessie Wilber Gallery
July 24 – September 1, 2023

Reception

Thursday, August 11th from 5:00-8:00pm

Artist Statement

“I’m interested in the legacy of the myths of the West, and the associated nostalgia, longing and melancholy in tension with the unknowable power of nature and the clumsy legacy of man that seems ongoing.”

Artist Bio

Matthew Hamon is a freelance portrait photographer based in Montana. His photography exists conceptually and aesthetically in the liminal spaces between photojournalism and staged editorial imagery. Matthew hails from a small, remote town in Northern California. A sense of place informed by wandering the woods as a child inspires his enquiry. Self-described as “post-rural,” Matthew currently lives in Missoula, Montana near the Blackfoot River.

Matt is a featured artist in Scott Ligon’s, “Digital Art Revolution,” (Watson-Guptil/Random House). Matthew’s work has been featured in CNN, The New York Times, Outside Magazine, The Independent-UK, Lens Culture, LifeFramer, 1 Million Photographers (1MP), 6Mois.fr, Stern.de, XL Semanal, Le Monde, morphyne.com, Edge of Humanity, Don’t Take Pictures, Month of Photography, Los Angeles (MOPLA), PDN’s Emerging Photographer, and Smith Journal.

Matthew was a finalist for the 2016 edition of “Nera di Verzasca Award,” winner of the Diaframmi Chiusi Photography Prize, and IPHA 5 (Manifest’s International Photography Annual). He is a 2016 Syngenta photography award recipient and first prize winner in PhotogrAphy’s 2016 grant. Matthew was awarded first prize in the 2018 Portraits Hellerau exhibition in Hellerau, Germany. He was featured in the 2016 and 2017 editions of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK, and in The Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition 160 (IPE 160).