MATTHEW SWARTS

I use computers to question some of the things I make with cameras.

I believe in photography’s ability to touch truth, but less so in our placing of importance on it having some kind of indexical relationship to what’s “real.”

My work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, WIRED, DEAR DAVE, SLATE, GUP Magazine, FLAK photo, Conscientious Photography Magazine, Doubletake Magazine, Contact Sheet, Afterimage, Fotophile, In the Loupe, and other publications. I have exhibited work nationally and internationally, and I graduated from Princeton University (where I studied Ethics and the Philosophy of Value) and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (where I completed an MFA in Photography and Digital Imaging). I was on the faculty at Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Ramapo College, The University of Connecticut, The University of Massachusetts Boston, Middlesex College, and The Community College of Rhode Island. I am the recipient of a J.William Fulbright Scholar Grant and the Ruttenberg Arts Foundation Award for the best new work nationally in photographic portraiture.

I live and work in Somerville, Massachusetts.

 

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Library of Congress, Washington, DC

The George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York

The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

Transformer Station, Cleveland, Ohio

The Collection of Fred and Laura Bidwell

The Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, Chicago

The Friends of Photography, San Francisco

The Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA

Light Work, Syracuse, NY

Princeton University

FLAK Photo Collection

The Polaroid Collection

The Museum of New Art

The Peter C. Bunnell Collection

Collection of Gus and Arlette Kayafas

The Collection of Jim Fitts

The Collection of Jeffrey Keough
and other private collections

 

 

NEWS