Matthew Brooks is an emerging photographer based in Montréal, Québec. After pursuing studies in orchestral performance at the University of Manitoba, he will be receiving a B.F.A. in Studio Arts and Art History from Concordia University in 2015. Deeply interested in the modern city as well as its rural and sub-urban counterparts, his work seeks to decontextualize and disassemble the social landscape in order to re-examine and re-present it. His work is increasingly concerned with the ephemeral nature of modern cities and communities, and approaches photographic documentation as a deeply social practice and a cultural imperative of preservation. Today we share his series Disappearing.
Disappearing
Disappearing is concerned with the inherently ephemeral nature of the shifting suburban and rural landscape. By documenting aspects of the twentieth century that persist into our present, it seeks to create a documentary imperative whereby these elements are preserved.
Produced with a 1950’s Rollei camera, these elements of the social landscape were produced with a product of their own time, creating a paradigm of the ephemeral documenting itself. By photographing iconic or archetypical elements, the resulting work resembles found photographs and explores the notion of constructed or artificial found imagery.
To view more of Matthew’s work please his website.