Matt Willen--About

Light. Form. Focus. Perspective. These are among the primary elements with which I work in an effort to disturb my habitual and familiar ways of seeing, and to develop an alternative vision of the common and familiar. In the image galleries included here, you’ll find no grand landscapes, no famous people, no significant cultural events. You’ll find, instead, corn stalks, clothespins, and cows straining against the low light of fall; splashes of color reflected in water, steel, and asphalt; the surface of a simple creek animated by the cold of winter. The photos are intended as visual poems; constructs that attempt to show the complexities and ambiguities inherent in everyday experience.

I was born on Long Island, studied photography in high school and, for a short time, at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1970s. I now live in Hershey, PA. While I gained quite a bit of technical understanding of photographic processes during the 70s, I have taught and re-taught myself the history, theory, and practice of photography through extensive reading, teaching, and experimentation. I work with both film and digital media. I work in both color and black and white.

From 2008 through 2010, I worked on a documentary project in the Westfjords of Iceland, during which I developed an extensive website, Focus Westfjords, with my friend and collaborator, Agust Atlason. From that project, I developed an exhibition of black and white prints that were displayed at the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg during June/July 2010 entitled Scenes From the Northwest of Iceland. I also developed a presentation on the Westfjords that I offer to private and public organizations.

Currently, I am working on a still life project and learning to print on alternative substrates, such as canvas and hand-made papers. My photographs are represented in several private collections, and I have had several solo exhibitions in small venues in Central Pennsylvania, in the Hess Gallery at Elizabethtown College, and at the Susquehanna Art Museum. I am currently seeking gallery representation.