My son, Matt, had another set of photographs on public display at Artomatic, the yearly, month-long, DC-area multimedia free-for-all that fills up an empty office building with the creative work of hundreds artists of varying degrees of accomplishment and invention. The show will be taken down tomorrow so we went to see it this evening since our travels had prevented us from taking it in sooner. Matt had to put in his time as a volunteer at the event (a requirement of all participating exhibitors) but he got away from a few moments so that I could snap this picture of him.
Matt drew a lot of attention, apparently, and I had feedback from a friend who chanced upon the exhibit and thought it was really good. Matt also got a favorable review by Mark Power (his photography teacher so he may not have been completely impartial, but probably sensitive): "His work may not have been the "best" photography at Artomatic but I liked it the best." According to the exhibit rules, Matt had to design, build and set up his exhibit himself so he invested a lot of time getting the show ready, even learning how to frame pictures. As I mentioned here previously, he was in an photo exhibit in March.
I thought his photos were quite inventive and the triptych plus one format created a kind of graphic language that tapped into quotidian objects for resonance and irony. Matt had never shown any "artistic" tendencies in childhood; he had plenty of potential as a writer. His training as a geographer (cartography, remote imaging, and other graphics) probably opened him to more visual expression. He's mostly self-taught, except for a few classes that he's taken recently.
