Matthew Connors
Matthew Connors is an artist whose commitment to the medium of photography has been propelled by the revelatory potential of the public sphere. His interests are rooted in his early studies in literature and political philosophy, which inform his approach to historical, social, and political realities. He uses photography and writing as means to convey the emotional and intellectual weight of those realities, and expand notions of the documentary. When photographing, he gravitates toward the external world and has been drawn to valences of friction between governments and the collective will of their citizenry. His resulting work navigates between reportage, poetry, and surrealist impulses to find different visual idioms that can render specific currents of history with emotional urgency. His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. His first monograph Fire in Cairo (SPBH Editions, 2015) was awarded the ICP Infinity Award for best artist book in 2016. He has also been awarded two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, a Headlands Center for the Arts Residency, the Lightwork Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship. Connors earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago and a MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art. He has taught in the Image Text Ithaca MFA Program, the Yale Photography MFA Program and the Photography Department at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design where he has been a professor since 2004.
