Photocopying the American Dream

London-based photographer, curator, and zine publisher Matt Martin has been tripping across the pond for close to a decade in order to satisfy his love for America. Since 2014, he’s been focused on LA. Channelling it through his camera, Martin produces digital prints of the vast American landscape which he then Xeroxes to produce two-tone prints on a range of different paper textures that hark back to his early interest in punk and skate photography and its ephemera. Alongside shooting his own work, Martin is the curator at Dalston’s Doomed Gallery, putting on an incredible amount of shows each month – and now he’s getting his own, titled American Xerography and opening May 16.

Below we chat with Martin about chasing the American Dream.

Tell us a bit about yourself as a photographer?

Matt Martin: My photography started off covering punk and skate culture and grew more into portrait and documentary as I got older. I started the exhibition project The Photocopy Club in 2011 and I am currently the curator at Doomed Gallery. My work has recently focused more on landscape and city details and experimenting with found image and print. 

What influences your work?

Matt Martin: The whole aesthetic of Xerox work comes from those early days of being in the punk scene. Black and white gig posters covered the city when I was growing up and once I got into photography that way of printing my work just seemed to fit. Graffiti and skate art had a lot to do with it too. I would print these images of friends painting and then blow them up and wheatpaste them around the city. Photographers like Ari Marcopoulos and JR got me into taking portraits and that mixture of punk, zine and skate culture fuelled the process of documenting everything. 

Tell us about this body of work, American Xerography?

Matt Martin: I have always had that interest in the American Road trip. Like a lot – dare I say all – photographers look at it as a right of passage in some way. I had been studying the works of Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Alex Webb and Garry Winogrand and was trying to figure out a way that I could document the over-photographed theme in a way that fitted me. I have also been studying a lot of historical found image work covering all sorts of themes from American History to the Pyramids. I didn't want to do just another "Photographer goes to the states and take photos" project. It's been done and I have done it myself. American Xerography is taking all those aspects of how I take photographs while referencing the found image and trying to give a sense of something that could be part of a historical finding in some way.

“The landscape of California changes so much as you move through it. I started to look more of the shape of the landscape and ideas of how I could strip this back to being something a bit more simplistic” – Matt Martin

What is it that draws you to Los Angeles, particularly the West Coast?

Matt Martin: The landscape of California changes so much as you move through it. I started to look more of the shape of the landscape and ideas of how I could strip this back to being something a bit more simplistic. Not just a project about LA but about the lay of the land and how America was designed and built via the train lines, the national parks, freeways and building design.

You’ve been documenting the West Coast since 2014 – how has your work evolved over the past three years?

Matt Martin: Before I was trying to make strong colour and black and white work on the streets of LA. I started off working with the colours and the shadows that the light out there gives you. Then I started to Xerox the work and then scan in and reprint, this is where I found how I wanted the work to really look. The layers of toner giving me strong black shadows but also highlighting certain details that came out stronger in this format. I started off shooting most of that early work on foot and travelling by bus but this year I had a car and the project just opened up. 

Tell us about the process of creating these. You’ve shot them digitally, scanned them, printed, rescanned and printed. Why did you choose to do this?

Matt Martin: I started shooting digital in the last couple of years just down to cost. But I still only shoot one or two frames of each subject, I like to keep that film mindset when shooting. I started to experiment with different paper types on the photocopier and tried to use different textures of the papers to work with the images themselves. I want the prints to look like they are holding the image within so the paper becomes as much a part of the story as the photographs.

American Xerography opens tonight at Doomed Gallery

Exhibition: American Xerography

Photographer: Matt Martin

Date: 16.5.17

Location: Doomed Gallery, Ridley Road Dalston, E8 2NP

American Xerography is a new exhibition by Photographer Matt Martin.

Matt has been photographing the American landscape since 2009 and since then has

made zines and small press publications as well as exhibitions covering this work.

Since 2014 Matt has been focused on documenting the West Coast, primarily Los Angles

and the surrounding areas. This exhibition is a series of new work of xerox prints that

have been scanned, printed, rescanned and printed as well as working with 

The exhibition of 30 prints will be on display at Doomed Gallery in Dalston from the

16.5.17 (Appointment only dates from the 17.5.17 - 23.5.17)

Bio: Matt Martin (b.1987) is a photographer, curator and publisher based in London.

He started the exhibition project The Photocopy Club in 2011 and is currently the curator

at Doomed Gallery. His work ranges for Documentary to Portrait and has recently focused

more on landscape and city details.

Website: cargocollective.com/mattmartin