Andy Mattern
Stillwater, USA
ARTIST BIO
Andy Mattern is a visual artist working in the expanded field of photography. His photographs and installations dissect the medium itself, reconfiguring expectations of photography's basic ingredients and conventions.
His work is held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. His photographs and exhibitions have been positively reviewed in publications such as Artforum, The New Yorker, Camera Austria, and Photonews. His projects have been funded by grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition and chosen in juried competitions such as Photolucida's Critical Mass Top 50. His first monograph, Average Subject / Medium Distance, was published by Aint-Bad Press in 2021.
Currently, he serves as Associate Professor of Photography at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Minnesota and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico.
PROJECT STATEMENT
Hiding on the backs of some long-forgotten photographs are “ghost” images, faint traces of other pictures that pressed up against the surface for decades. In fact, these apparitions are a side effect of platinum photography, whose key ingredient reacts with near papers, leaving a mirror image. Although platinum photography is celebrated for its image permanence and rich tones, this popular process declined before the First World War because platinum was needed to make explosives. This destructive ability is the same power that accidentally produces ghost images.
Amazed to stumble upon this phenomenon, I have been searching the backs of thousands of old pictures for nearly three years, hunting for ghosts. When I finally find one, I carefully re-photograph it with a special lighting system to bring out the figures. From there, I produce a new negative and create a modern platinum print, which reanimates the cycle and provides the ghosts yet another chance to multiply. This process is meant to harness the mysterious visual qualities of the source material and point to a surprising wrinkle in the fabric of the medium: when no one is looking, the photographs are reproducing themselves.
