honorable mention
Matt Portch australia
title
Lost America
Backwater towns and rural corners are juxtaposed with the ambiguity of detached suburbia. Places appear frozen in time, their inhabitants absent or long since departed.
Ardently stagnant in their appearance, the images aim to unlock a moment of reflective contemplation and instil a melancholic feeling of familiarity.
One might not notice or acknowledge these spaces, especially when viewed within the vast stretch of America’s panorama. Yet, when framed as a single vignette, the places can appear to echo a moment of mournful reverie. Or, for some, they might behold an alluringly sombre, everlasting impression.
I studied Graphic Design and Photography at Brunel Technical College in Bristol and pursued a successful career in Design up to the present day.
In my childhood I was a keen illustrator with an eye for detail. I grew up in the seventies on a steady diet of North American culture through the media of TV and Film. In the backdrop of this media was an exotic and colourful landscape that was an immediate antidote to the English, every-day life.
The new digital revolution that spawned from the millennium spurred my interest in photography once more. Ironically, it was the large format colour film photographers from the sixties and seventies in North America who inspired me. I was fascinated by the seemingly ordinary street scenes and vistas that were captured with fastidious detail.
I discovered a modern, yet more practical process in the form of a technical camera, digital back, and precision optics, then proceeded to cast my own journey.
When I photograph a scene, I capture everything across the frame in complete focus. Given the theme is so sedate, the detail of the capture is just as important to me as the subject and becomes a character of the image in itself.
I use the full-size of the sensor and never crop. I like to restrict myself to these disciplines as the one austere part of the image process - a digital reverence to the era of large format photography if you will.
My creative vision is to capture a calm and austere disposition in the landscape and to create a scene of discernible simplicity. Rather than studying people directly in my pictures, I choose the landscape alone to evoke an emotional response from within.
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entry description
Lost America examines a quiet stillness in a forgotten landscape that is, in a sense: ‘on-pause’.Backwater towns and rural corners are juxtaposed with the ambiguity of detached suburbia. Places appear frozen in time, their inhabitants absent or long since departed.
Ardently stagnant in their appearance, the images aim to unlock a moment of reflective contemplation and instil a melancholic feeling of familiarity.
One might not notice or acknowledge these spaces, especially when viewed within the vast stretch of America’s panorama. Yet, when framed as a single vignette, the places can appear to echo a moment of mournful reverie. Or, for some, they might behold an alluringly sombre, everlasting impression.
about the photographer
I was born in Bristol, England and now live in Melbourne, Australia.I studied Graphic Design and Photography at Brunel Technical College in Bristol and pursued a successful career in Design up to the present day.
In my childhood I was a keen illustrator with an eye for detail. I grew up in the seventies on a steady diet of North American culture through the media of TV and Film. In the backdrop of this media was an exotic and colourful landscape that was an immediate antidote to the English, every-day life.
The new digital revolution that spawned from the millennium spurred my interest in photography once more. Ironically, it was the large format colour film photographers from the sixties and seventies in North America who inspired me. I was fascinated by the seemingly ordinary street scenes and vistas that were captured with fastidious detail.
I discovered a modern, yet more practical process in the form of a technical camera, digital back, and precision optics, then proceeded to cast my own journey.
When I photograph a scene, I capture everything across the frame in complete focus. Given the theme is so sedate, the detail of the capture is just as important to me as the subject and becomes a character of the image in itself.
I use the full-size of the sensor and never crop. I like to restrict myself to these disciplines as the one austere part of the image process - a digital reverence to the era of large format photography if you will.
My creative vision is to capture a calm and austere disposition in the landscape and to create a scene of discernible simplicity. Rather than studying people directly in my pictures, I choose the landscape alone to evoke an emotional response from within.
back to gallery