Tag: Matt Eich

A new exhibition of work by Matt Eich at jdc fine art draws from a year and a half of prolific image-making in an ongoing visual journal series titled, Seasonal Blues. This string of work links moments together like a never-ending chain. A selection of the work exists as limited-edition prints and many more appear in small-run quarterly self-published books by the emerging artist (under the imprint Little Oak Press). Time- the fleeting baseline of life itself- is revealed in Eich’s Seasonal Blues. As Eich creates this image of the world, he seeks to locate himself within it.

Matt Eich: One day, while wandering a small village in southeastern Ohio, I stumbled on a rugged-looking man and his two sons cleaning up muddy dirt bikes at a car wash. Most of the folks I had encountered up until this point were incredibly distrustful of outsiders, so I was immediately drawn in by his open demeanor. He seemed just as curious about me as I was about him.

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.

Just over a decade ago, Matt Eich started photographing rural Ohio. Largely inhabited by what is now known as the “Forgotten Class” of white, blue-collar workers, Eich found himself drawn to the proud but economically abandoned small towns of Appalachia