Matthew Porter: This Is How It Ends
Nova, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
In the year 2000, while channel surfing through pay per view, I came across Gone in 60 Seconds, a movie about a retired master car thief who had to re-enter the industry and steal fifty cars with his crew in one night to save his brother's life. Nicolas Cage and a blonde Angelina Jolie wowed the audiences as Memphis and Sway, but the real star of the show was Eleanor, the 1967 Mustang Shelby GT500 that had car enthusiasts everywhere in a giddy fit. We watched in utter amazement for 47 seconds as a beautiful car defied gravity and sailed effortlessly across a bridge in mid-air.
Conversation, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
Many of us were left wanting more, more gravity-defying car leaps, and years later Matthew Porter has filled that void in spades while also giving us a collection of stunning images of vistas of skyscrapers, and various locations at sunset, in his series This Is How It Ends.
Porter is an American photographer who is best known for his surreal photographs of muscle cars that appear to be in flight high above the streets.
This Is How It Ends, a name filled with a sense of tenebrosity, however it is a series that is surprisingly filled with color. Bursts of orange and yellow in varying hues ink the sky at dusk as the sun dips across the Manhattan skyline and bathes the giant glass buildings towering above the city as a helicopter hovers above.
Resting, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
Porter’s photography is encased in cinematic romanticism, the silhouette of trees against a glowing sky that evokes a feeling of time standing still for a few seconds before the inevitable reality of darkness. Black and white images of stoplights and models that play with light and shadows.
This Is How It End, has themes of freedom and risk, the gravity-defying images of muscle cars in mid-flight, aglow from the setting sun evoke feelings of intoxicating liberty in those of us who have been confined to apartments these past few months.
Departure, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
Don't Walk, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
Porter’s work often has references of cultural and historical events all captured in a single frame or spreading them out over a series of tightly edited photographs.
He uses film, which allows for the accumulation of discrete exposures on a single piece of material. This process allows photography — a visual language of boxed, still images-to collage multiple topics into single frames.
Porter’s photography tells a narrative in a single shot, one that viewers may interpret differently as he captures the magnificent seconds of suspended periods in time that we all wish we could prolong and hold onto.
Links, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
Firebird, 2020 © Matthew Porter. Courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York, NY
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