Matthew Cox

Matthew Cox (b.1997, Carlisle) is a Cumbria-based photographer/artist, whose work examines stories and narratives hidden within our natural landscape. Investigating the land and exploring the visual possibilities of the analog photographic medium are common themes. A variety of photographic processes have been explored, including Silver Gelatin prints, Lithography, Chromogenic printing and pinhole Photography.
Works

Redacted Landscapes
Redacted Landscapes is an alternative perspective of the Isle of Arran. The images are a product of cycling around the island and taking an image every 15 minutes regardless of scenic value or compositional worthiness. The ‘redacting’ is twofold, first is the act of relinquishing total photographic control, the passage of time plus the speed, headwind and gradient onboard the bicycle is the real image selector. The second reductionist element is found within the photographic darkroom.
Darkroom photographic prints are presumed to be a sea of dense black plus brilliant white, a choreographed display of full tonality. The prints presented here- like the image capture methods- are of alternate motives. The tonal range has been vastly reduced, shadows lightened to reveal what is near and highlight detail discarded to obscure what is far. For me, images that abandon the ‘grand vista’ and embrace the intangible are those most provocative.
Through this systematic form of image making, the deadpan is paired with the coincidental, and the trivial paired with intriguing perspectives. The landscape, when travelled through gradually felt expansive and, to me, revealed an everyday beauty.