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Buried Car, CA

From an ongoing series, Lost America examines a quiet stillness in a forgotten landscape that is, in a sense, ‘on pause’. Places appear frozen in time, their inhabitants absent or long since departed. Ardently stagnant in appearance, the spaces yearn to instil a melancholic feeling of familiarity.

Awards

Photographer of the Year Contest

2024

International Discovery of the Year

Overall Contest Winner

Discovery of the Year

Landscapes

Non Professional

Buried Car, CA

From an ongoing series, Lost America examines a quiet stillness in a forgotten landscape that is, in a sense, ‘on pause’. Places appear frozen in time, their inhabitants absent or long since departed. Ardently stagnant in appearance, the spaces yearn to instil a melancholic feeling of familiarity.

About Artist

Matthew Portch

Using a scrupulous method of capture, Matt’s pictures aim to alter our view of familiar habitats as conscious retrospections. The discernibly banal metamorphosis into a perception of aesthetic beauty. His creative vision captures a calm and melancholic disposition in the landscape, evoking an emotional response. Environments are appraised as simple, clean, and graphic impressions. Purposefully devoid of people and any notable present-day objects, the images appear to have no concept of time.  In his system of capture, the full depth of the scene is arrested in focus, lending a heightened sense of reality. Each setting is deliberately mundane, so the detail becomes a character of the image itself. Restricting to the full-frame format without cropping is a deliberate reverence to large format film. Matthew is currently based in Melbourne, Australia. Although he was born and raised in Bristol, England, the visuals of North America have always been a major influence on his life. He grew up through the ‘70s and ‘80s in a typical middle-class suburb. Television and film were his favourite distractions, the majority of which came from the USA. The backdrop of the North American scenery felt like an exotic antidote to the English city suburbs and countryside. A keen illustrator, he spent hours pouring over the minutia of his subject with the aim of making the illustrations as close to reality as possible. Almost photographic, if you will. This work saw him enrol in college at a young age, where he studied graphic design and photography. Drawing on his childhood memories, the American landscape has remained a major source of inspiration for his work. Matt is inspired by the North American photographers of the ‘60s and ‘70s, who were prevalent in using large format film. This laborious system of capture seemed to enhance the seemingly ordinary-looking street scenes with fastidious detail. Matthew discovered a more modern process in the form of a technical camera, digital back, and precision optics, then proceeded to cast his own journey. Matthew’s work has garnered numerous international awards, received recognition in the global press, and been featured in multiple exhibitions on an international stage.

Matthew Portch

Photographic Areas of Focus

Architecture, Architecture, Landscapes, Landscapes

Location

Australia

Interview

Matthew Portch | 2024 Photographer of the Year Contest | International Discovery of the Year | Non-Professional

Interview

Matthew Portch | 2024 Photographer of the Year Contest | International Discovery of the Year | Non-Professional
Silver
Bronze
People’s Vote Award
Jan-Tore Oevrevik

Jan-Tore Oevrevik

Landscapes

Nominee
Thomas Speck

Thomas Speck

Landscapes

Nominee
Jeff Lovelace

Jeff Lovelace

Landscapes

Bronze
Krisztina Kovacs

Krisztina Kovacs

Landscapes

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