Recorded in: Brooklyn, NY
Episode Length: 37:07
Air Date: January 12, 2022
Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Ellen Payne Smith
When I went to visit Matt Leifheit last month at his MATTE HQ storefront in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, I found him with a paint bucket in hand, touching up a few spots on the walls from an exhibition that was just taken down. The space is on the ground floor of the building in which resides. He opened last year to do exhibitions, book launches and special events. It became a new extension MATTE Editions, the publishing initiative which he founded over a decade ago. With it, he's published MATTE magazine, books, and has put on shows, all at the same time of making his own photographs, teaching, writing, and working as an editor. I think that's the thing that's always impressed me about Matt - his involvement in many different capacities within the medium, each activity informing another.
As a photographer, his work often takes the form of projects, in which he adopts a format and style for each one, much like a director would on a film.
This spring, his first monograph, To Die Alive, is being published by Damiani, made up of a photos taken on Fire Island over the past five years.
From To Die Alive, forthcoming by Damiani
from Yale Daily News series
The Whitman's Sampler, 2021