MATTHEW ARNOLD
Longing for Amelia—The Historical and Mythological Landscape
Exhibition Dates: June 11 - September 3, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 11, 4-6pm
We are happy to introduce you to Matthew Arnold. His exhibition Longing for Amelia—The Historical and Mythological Landscape will open on Saturday, June 11, 2022.
Matthew Arnold is an American landscape photographer whose work strives to connect the significance of history with the topography of the land on which the history is shaped. His work has been exhibited and promoted widely across the United States and around the world in galleries and museums.
THE PROJECT
On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during the third to the last of 32 legs of her heroic but ill-fated attempt to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by airplane. The last confirmed radio transmission came when Earhart and Noonan said they were nearly 200 miles from Howland Island. There was no further contact.
Eighty-four years after Earhart’s disappearance, only theories remain, yet her legend survives in the many individuals still searching for evidence of what happened to her on that fateful day in 1937.
What is it that keeps us still so captivated with Earhart? Is it an admiration for her bold fearlessness as an aviator in industry and era dominated by men? Is the mythology surrounding her disappearance so intriguing because she disappeared in such a remote and unknown environment to most Westerners? Is it the undeniable romance of an almost archetypal tragedy—a 20th-century Icarus? Or is it because it occurred under such extraordinary circumstances, only a few years prior to the beginning of the Second World War?
With this new exhibition, Matthew Arnold documents the environs that play host to, and the science used to support the multiple theories which attempt to resolve the mystery of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Matthew Arnold’s first solo exhibition of this project was recently on view at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University.
His previous project was published as a monograph entitled, Topography Is Fate—North African Battlefields of World War II, by the German publisher, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg,
with a foreword written by Hilary Roberts, research curator of photography at the Imperial War Museums in Britain. It has been exhibited at the Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery in New York City, the Metropolitan Gallery in Philadelphia, and has been featured in photography festivals and group exhibitions around the world—including an important exhibition at the MFA in Boston entitled Permanent War—The Age of Global Conflict.
Arnold was recently named a 2020 Critical Mass Top 50 Photographer by Photolucida (his second) for his project on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. In 2020 he was asked to jury the Earth Photo Prize for the Royal Geographical Society in London. Other awards that he has won include being named a Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Traveling Fellow, as well as a Top 50 LensCulture Emerging Photographer.
Matthew Arnold currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
