Artist reception for ArtSpace Gallery exhibit – Matthew Terry

Matthew Terry is a contemporary photographer, author and graduate of the Academy of Art University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in photography with a focus in fine art photography in December 2014. Currently located in the Quad-City area, Terry picked up his first film camera in 2004 at age 16 and since has exhibited and sold work at galleries in Rome, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Colorado and Omaha, among others. His work has been published both nationally (Iowa, Vermont, New York, Atlanta) and internationally (Italy, England).

Terry’s work has been exhibited from coast to coast and internationally. He also contributes his vision to several publications in the Quad Cities and beyond. Recently he was featured in the 175th anniversary edition of The Annals of Iowa and was a featured guest at the 2021 Celebrate Iowa Gala. Terry is a quickly emerging talent from eastern Iowa, attempting to change up the perception of what Midwestern/Iowa art has traditionally represented.

“ ‘Revisiting Past Exposures’ is inspired by the idea that when you see a place, an image of it is created in your mind, and until revisiting this location, you view it as your mind previously saw it. Sometimes upon returning, you realize things aren’t quite as you remembered, and these two sections of time don’t blend so smoothly into one another. My project attempts to recreate this experience by presenting handheld printed images aligned with modern scenes. This is an experience I feel most people can relate to.

“This project is equal parts final product, preparation and process, placing great significance on the time that passes between shooting the first image, making a physical print, and then aligning this print for the final “present day” image. While these photographs tend to be shot within relatively close proximity to where I live, the time between the two aligned shots can span months and often years. This documents the combination of my own past and present experiences and challenges me to relate the two in order to present this idea to the viewer through my images.

“Furthermore, I like to keep a level of individual interpretation in my work, and I want my viewers to experience the work aesthetically, yet still take more from the deeper meaning. I want the viewer to reflect on the relationship between the past and the present, seeing how powerful the human mind is at creating a defined image of a place, and how until revisiting that location our perception of it ceases to be changed; commenting on the way we compare the past and present, and how it often takes witnessing the past from a present perspective to understand how familiar yet beautifully different it appears in relation.”