CONTACT SHEET 208: MATTHEW CONNORS
General Assembly Exhibition Catalogue
Photographs by Matthew Connors
Text by Mary Lee Hodgens
Light Work, Syracuse, NY, 2020
Softcover, 48 pages, 9 x 10 in.
Edition of 2700
Publisher’s Website

Light Work presents New York based artist Matthew Connors’s General Assembly. This exhibition comprises 650 portraits that span the first year of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in New York City. An expansive project that pairs individual black and white portraits within a tightly formatted grid, General Assembly borrows its title from the movement’s horizontal decision-making process. Connors made these black-and-white portraits in the charged atmosphere of Zuccotti Park, elsewhere in New York City at direct actions, and during more contemplative moments before and after working group meetings.

This catalog includes an essay by Light Work’s associate director Mary Lee Hodgens.

THE POETICS
Photographs by Matthew Connors
Text by Lucy Ives
Design by Elana Schlenker
Image Text Ithaca Press,  2019
Softcover, 188 pages, 5.25 x 8 in.
Edition of 600
Publisher’s Website

In July of 2017, photographer Matthew Connors and novelist Lucy Ives embarked on a strange project: to remove and catalog all the contents of Connors's car, a 1992 Volvo 240 station wagon.

Although the New York–based duo began the endeavor without knowing where it would lead, their investigation—of parts, tools, ephemera, litter, personal items, unidentifiable disjecta, among other objects—lasted more than two years and resulted in a series of photographs by Connors and an essay by Ives on narrative forms and temporalities inherent to contemporary media.

This collaborative publication, designed by Elana Schlenker, poses questions about where narrative originates and how we establish our stories in relation to the objects and timescales that carry, ground, and surround us.

Review by Olga Yatskevich, Collector Daily
Review by Chris Campanioni, The Brooklyn Rail

WAKE
Photographs by Matthew Connors
Roman Nvmerals Press, New York, 2019
Softcover, 24 pages, 9.25 x 13 in.
Unbound
Publisher’s Website

In the months following the 2016 United States presidential election, Connors photographed the paroxysms of public dissent that arose in Washington D.C. and New York City. America entered a period when broad based disobedience reasserted itself as a historic force and upended the terms of public debate. The pictures he made reflect on the emergence of new protest vocabularies and the tensions between strategic nonviolent action and disruptive confrontation.

FIRE IN CAIRO
Photographs and text by Matthew Connors
Design by Antonio de Luca
SPBH Editions, London, 2015
Hardcover, lithography, 148 pages, 7.85 x 10 in.
Edition of 1000
Publisher’s Website

Fire in Cairo emerged from Egypt as an oblique and fragmentary document of revolutionary struggle. The book charts Connors’ uneasy engagement with the political turmoil that gripped the nation during its rapidly unfolding history. The complexity of the situation resisted comprehensive explanation, but invited metaphorical speculation. In his images Cairo reveals itself to be an enormous studio for social change, ripe with visual, sculptural and atmospheric residues of resistance. He weaves these together with portraits of Egyptians from across the political spectrum and his own experimental fiction. The result is a book that careens between reportage, poetry and surrealism to heighten the tensions between beauty, threat and historical consequence.

Recipient of the 2016 ICP Infinity Award: Artist’s Book
Shortlisted for the 2015 Paris Photo-Aperture Photography First PhotoBook
Arles Author Book Award Shortlist
Best Books 2015: Gerry Badger, photo-eye
Best Books 2015: Aaron Schuman, photo-eye
The Best Photography Books of 2015, Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian
The 16 Best Photobooks of 2015, Humble Arts Foundation

Review by Brian Sholis, frieze
Review by Hélène Sallon, M, Le Magazine du Monde
Review by Brad Feuerhelm, AMERICAN SUBURB X
Review by Marco Bohr, Photomonitor
Review by Ronnie Close, Mada Masr
Review by Adam Bell, photo-eye
Review by Max Houghton, 1000 Words
Review by Jorg M. Colberg, Conscientious Photo Magazine
Review by Olga Yatskevich, Collector Daily
Review by Paul Moakley, TIME
Review by Lucy Davies, British Journal of Photography

Interview with Clara Balaguer and Czar Kristoff, TUNICA Magazine 

GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Photographs and text by Matthew Connors
Handmade Book, 2013
Hardcover, 670 pages, 7.75 x 9.75 in.
Edition of 3 with 1 AP

The collective power of public assembly is one of the most effective instruments of opposition at the core of every protest movement. In the wake of economic calamity, these protesters and activists congregated at the doorstep of New York City's financial institutions to challenge the power of global capital and contemplate the contours of alternative systems.  An array of issues motivated them to participate in Occupy Wall Street. They embraced divergent political philosophies and often articulated competing visions for the future. What they shared, though, was the overwhelming sense that something is incredibly wrong with their country, and that radical change was necessary. Together they were committed to reversing systematic inequality through direct democracy; regularly building consensus and cultivating radical inclusivity through the horizontal decision making process from which this book borrows its name.

These portraits were made in the charged atmosphere of Zuccotti Park, elsewhere in the city during direct actions, and at more contemplative moments before and after working group meetings and teach-ins. The plates appear in roughly chronological order from September 2011 to September 2012, spanning the dynamic founding year of a movement whose legacy continues to unfold. These individuals represent only a small fraction of the Americans engaged in rebellion that year, but they are a concentrated expression of the conviction that this struggle is essential to our collective future.

Shortlisted for 2015 Kassel FotoBook Festival Dummy Award