Matt Eich - Photolucida

Matt Eich

This submission is drawn from a monograph containing 91 photographs made between 2006 - 2018, published by Sturm & Drang in July 2024.

It is 2024 in America. I am 37 years old.

Through the course of making these photographs, my relationship to America and the medium of photography has grown heavier. What was once a creeping feeling, a gnawing worry, has now been made fully visible. My country is broken, and I fear it may be beyond repair. If you still believe the myth, you aren’t paying attention.

The America of these photographs is gone, replaced by something darker, more paranoid, more self-destructive. For many it has always been a difficult and unjust land. When I look at these images, I think about how quickly time passes, how soon we will all be gone from this earth. And life will go on, in all its beauty, all its terribleness. I think about how heavy it feels to move through this world, but how light my efforts are when made tangible in the form of photographs. They are light as air. Like smoke. Unable to change a damn thing.

Despite my predisposition towards despair, I hope that America’s arc can drift towards peace, justice, equity, and sustainability. While the photographs are inextricable from how I feel, they are meant to be about something more—a search for a shared humanity, an intimacy with strangers, the desire for an expanded empathy.

Website www.matteichphoto.com