Matthew Genitempo is an American photographer and book publisher currently living and making work in Marfa, Texas. His first book, Jasper, was chosen for the Hariban Juror’s Choice Award and short-listed for the 2018 Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Prize.
Inspired by the life and work of the poet and land surveyor, Frank Stanford, these photographs of hermetic homes and men living in solitude were taken in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri. By capturing the foggy landscapes, cluttered interiors, and rugged men that are tucked away in the dark woods, Jasper explores a fascination with running away from the everyday. The work bounces between fact and fiction, exhibiting the reality and myth of what it means to be truly apart from society.
“It’s early in the morning in the Ozarks and the fog snakes its way between the hills in these highly descriptive yet mysterious photographs by Matthew Genitempo. This photographer looks at men who lead isolated lives in their cabins and caves. Possibly the men are hunters or observers of nature; one maintains a collection of obsolete videotapes but mostly little is told to us about these men or their activities. In one nocturnal scene, some hunched white creature scuttles across a vague white terrain — is it a phantasm or taxidermy specimen? A cat on high guards over an axe that’s jimmied in place to keep a trailer door from opening. The men light their fires and the smoke rises up to join the fog.”
Mark Steinmetz
