Art of Essex

MATT ROBERTS: Every Picture Tells His Story

Story and portrait by Dan Epstein

One of his earliest memories was looking at a book featuring the photographs from the renown Family of Man exhibit. Armed with his father’s Brownie camera as a child, it was Roberts’ start making photographs. After pursuing an MFA at the Pratt Institute, it only took three months of working for a commercial photographer in NYC for him to know that the life of a professional photographer wasn’t for him. Happily a job in an ad agency in Manhattan led to a long career in marketing including being the Head of Marketing for Conde Nast publications. And that allowed Roberts to follow his photographic muse for his entire life untethered to the requirement for his photographs to support himself and his family.

He moved to Montclair in 1986, and joining Studio Montclair a local arts organization he began exhibiting his work locally, as well as in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Rome. In 1990 and again in 1999, he received grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Roberts seems to have multiple projects going on at once. And regardless of the project, his work is lyrical, and emotionally resonant. Each image seems to have a mysterious narrative in which both Roberts, and the subjects ask questions of us.

In Vesey Street, made in NYC in 2018 with an iPhone, Roberts captures a moment in public time. We are drawn at once to the bold graphic elements, the almost forlorn objects near the curb, the woman, seemingly in a hurry on a windy day, and finally the remarkable shadows. A story without an ending and fraught with questions.

Look at Cathy77/Cathy21. Herein are two portraits of the artists wife; one made when she was twenty, and one 44 years later. Note that both images are rotated. Having done this, Roberts throws us just a little bit, but in doing so, the young woman faces the grown up mature woman whom Roberts has spent his life with. Her beauty resonates in both portraits combining to create a striking love letter. And the water? That’s for you to figure out.

Cathy2020

Find his muse again in Cathy2020. An image made with a full-sized Canon camera while walking in South Dakota. You can hear the crunch of your feet on the wild grass as you feel the wind blowing. This photograph is full of information. Chock full. Yet, it’s up to us, the viewers to take that data, and write the Roberts narrative. We confess: this one is one of our favorite photographs.

Finally, Backyard Reimagined, made in 2020. Roberts has a large body of work wherein he manually handdegrades some of his original photographs, and in this one he has created a collage of three separate images on three pieces of paper, then physically combining them and re-photographing them together to create the final piece: his backyard during the Covid lockdown when we all were confined, and many of us reimagining various aspects of our lives. Beauty, elegance, and contrast are all parts again, of a Roberts narrative about his reaction to Covid, and the found fragility, and loneliness of the period in time.

You can find more of Roberts’ remarkable work on his Instagram as well as his website.

Matt Roberts

MattDRobertsPhotography.com Instagram: MattRobertsPhotog

Backyard Reimagined

Cathy77/Cathy21