Matt Eich
I Love You, I’m Leaving
[ EPF 2017 – FINALIST ]
My introduction to photography was in childhood, as my grandmother was dying of Alzheimer’s disease. The hopelessness of her plight triggered something within me, and when my grandfather handed me a camera, making photographs became a way of stabilizing the insecurity of memory and accessing emotional resonance. If we are at risk of forgetting too much of our world, and ourselves, photography is the antidote.
I created this work during a time of general domestic unease, when my parents separated after 33 years of marriage, my siblings all experienced drastic changes in their lives and my wife, children and I moved to a new city.
The title of this series, I Love You, I’m Leaving, stems from the constant rhythm of my peripatetic life. It holds true when I leave my family to photograph strangers, and leave strangers to return home.
This series borrows from personal experience, and the visual language of the everyday in order to create a fictional account that mirrors my reality. Photographs are reductions, distillations, half-truths and complete fabrications. They can only describe the surface of things, while I am interested in the intangible – memory and emotional resonance.
Despite our intimacy, the people I am closest to are unknowable, and will always remain a mystery to me. I photograph with the knowledge that our place in this world is tenuous, comprised of little more than memory and story. Memory is fragile; the moments are fleeting and have to be wrestled into a permanent state.
Short Bio
Matt Eich (b. 1986) is a portrait photographer, and photographic essayist working on long-form projects about the American condition. He is a Professional Lecturer of Photography at George Washington University and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife and two daughters.
Matt’s work has been widely exhibited and received numerous grants and recognitions, including PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch, the Joop Swart Masterclass, an Aaron Siskind Fellowship, and two Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography. Matt’s prints are held in the permanent collections of The Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The New York Public Library, Chrysler Museum of Art and others.
Eich studied photojournalism at Ohio University and holds an MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School’s International Limited-Residency Program. He has published two monographs, with three book publications scheduled between 2018 and 2020.
Related Links
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The Emerging Photographer Fund is supported by generous donors to the Magnum Foundation
Congratulations, Matt. Excellent, evocative piece of work, the kind that makes the task of judges miserable when they struggle to choose one potential winner over another. In my opinion, this could as easily have won as did the actual winner.
this could as easily have won as did the actual winner. Now that would not be a surprise considering the dismal work on show.
The demise of burn and quality image making is now evident
I’ll say this… burn has had one heck of a good run and in his quest to help bring other photographers to light, David has accomplished something that no other photographer has, or, I believe, will ever accomplish again.