Matt Emmet
Architecture PhotographerIt all began with a trip to Asia, for which his father gave him a PENTAX ME Super with the classic 50mm lens. At the end of the trip, the 80 films not only contained motifs that had a solid memory value, but also some pictures that touched other people. This experience led Matt Emmet to continue to photograph and then to dedicate himself to architecture and especially to Lost-Places photography.
A few years later he started to study photography and design. For Matt Emmet, design is a way to influence people. What form design takes depends on the theme to be presented, the atmosphere to be created or the goal to be achieved. That's why Matt Emmett travels as a designer and photographer. And in photography, his theme is especially architecture, landscape and the connection between them: urban landscape. In these genres, he is particularly interested in what atmosphere, what moods develop in particular places and how to depict, design or even create them. Could you please explain a little bit about the type of Design, you are talking about. Is this designing products or creating like graphic artists doing.
2016 he compiled many pictures taken on journeys through England and Europe in the book 'Forgotten Heritage'. The point here is that especially in supposedly forgotten heritage there are many stories that still have to be told.
The fact that he has continued to photograph with PENTAX since 1990 is not only due to the practical handling of the cameras: Since he wants to present his pictures perfectly, it is important for him to get the most out of them ... and therefore he especially appreciates the high image quality that he can create with PENTAX cameras. So he is still a “PENTAX PHOTOGRAPHER”
Matt Emmet with his project: ›Reading at Night‹
Matt Emmett's speciality is actually extraordinary archaeological sites, decayed, dusty and forgotten. Places, rooms, buildings that are no longer useful. But where the memory of bustle, representation or prosperity is still visible. Often these locations seem to be abandoned for a short time and then forgotten for eternities. Traces are there en masse, you can smell the passing life of old materials in these pictures. The photographer knows such places through research and references. And he has such projects on his agenda and is eagerly awaiting them.
But for the year 2020 he had to rethink. Because the Corona crisis forced him to cancel his trips and change his mind. But his obsession with photography could not be paused. He turned his gaze away from the distant exotic to the near familiar. And, since the lockdown was primarily intended to avoid contacts, he chose times when few people are on the road anyway. Thus the new project was born: to photograph his hometown at night. So he took his camera and tripod and explored his immediate surroundings, which he thought were actually very normal and ordinary. And suddenly the usual appeared to him in a different light. The special nocturnal light moods developed completely new perspectives in photography and stimulated the photographer's imagination. The lost, which his previous photo projects had had, was now in the nocturnal hour in which hardly anyone was out and about. Instead of dusty patina, squares, objects and buildings were covered with artificial light, giving the banal an unusual glow. The hard light/shadow structures of lamplight developed their own patterns and structures and also changed the natural colour of the materials. The familiar environment became an almost alien space and thus extraordinarily interesting.
In addition to his usual equipment (PENTAX K_1 II with various D-FA lenses), Matt Emmett also used the RICOH GR III and was amazed at how this camera could take on the darkness. This camera accompanied him permanently and so he took pictures that were only discovered by chance.
Matts DSLR equipment
He love to use the technique of DSL cameras