Matthew Shain (b. 1978) is originally from San Francisco, but he now lives and works in New Orleans. He earned a BS in Journalism with an emphasis on creative advertising from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2000. Realizing that he found the ways that images operate and convey information more engaging than the commercial information they actually carried, he pursued a second degree in Art, earning a BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts in 2005. And in 2012 he earned his MFA from UC Riverside.
Matthew has exhibited work in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside and New Orleans. His work is in the Special Collections of Rivera Library at UC Riverside and has been published in several journals, including Humble Arts Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography (2008), Harper’s Ferry Review (ASU Press) and Stop Smiling Magazine.
Halfway to Infinity
Matthew’s work is an aesthetic and philosophical exploration of this paradoxical space. By choosing a multitude of subjects that reflect his interest in literal and figurative dualities he seeks to create depictions that are neither true, nor false. They can only be known as photographs.
The photographs in this series were created individually, tangentially, organically as well as systematically. They are presented in such a way as to create a lyrical and overarching narrative. The form and content of one photograph informs the reading of the next, only to have that knot loosened by yet another photograph. However, it is not simply a matter of close reading. Equally at stake is what the viewer seeks in her exploration of the images because, while photographs will always signify themselves at some level, they are also indexical to the phenomenology of expression and comprehension, like resonance and reverberation.
To view more of Matthew’s work please visit his website.