8 rising photographers share their work on intimacy and desire

Standing at the vanguard of the times, glossy print magazines became arbiters of style, reaching a shimmering peak as the 20th century came to a close. As architects of contemporary thought, editors embraced the ethos of modern life, crafting a public image as tantalising as their work on the page. Formidable doyennes like Diana Vreeland and Carmel Snow set the archetype, which was endlessly reinvented for decades to come across film, television, and books such as Sex in the City, Ugly Betty, and The Devil Wears Prada.

“Growing up in the 90s, there were all these shows about people who worked at magazines in New York and it seemed like the most glamorous thing you could do. And then by the time I got to New York, that was over,” says photographer, publisher and educator Matthew Leifheit. With the explosion of digital media, the old guard struggled to adjust to a brave new world where physical magazines and newspapers became associated with yesterday’s news. Publications shuttered, leaving the industry ripe for reinvention. 

In 2010, Leifheit launched Matte – a photography magazine in the tradition of Peter Hujar’s downtown 1970s tabloid Newspaper and the Bay Area periodical Hamburger Eyes. As a young artist at the outset of his career, Lefiheit understood the challenges emerging photographers face entering an exclusionary discipline. He crafted Matte as a platform to do just this, creating a space for fresh visions and voices. 

In early 2023, contemplating issue 62, the magazine put out its first open call on Instagram with a succinct focus: “Exciting photography now.” Submissions surpassed all expectations, the images revealing a depth of passion and intensity that readily lent itself to the privacy of the printed page. Leifheit teamed up with New York Times photo editor Eve Lyons to create Exciting Photography Now, a spellbinding web of intimacy, tenderness and desire mapped across 480 pages. The new issue features photographers including Alec Soth, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Andrew Kung, Farah Al Qasimi, Gioncarlo Valentine, Elliot Jerome Brown Jr., and Sara Messinger whose work exquisitely describes the interplay between the outer world and our inner lives.

“There’s a lot of scepticism of young photographers,” says Leifheit. “People think it was all done in the 70s and we wanted to show how creativity and amazing new thought is happening. People are responding to things that are happening right now in the world. I don’t think that we need to reinvent the medium in order to do something new, because the world is always changing. People are always changing and having something new to say.”

The issue opens with an intricately layered portfolio of work by Dean Majd which unfolds like scenes from a dream under the electric skies of New York after dark. “Eve [Lyons] is a genius at seeing something in somebody’s work and understanding how it could relate to other pictures of theirs,” says Leifheit. For Majd’s portfolio, they began assembling images across different series, pairing landscapes of the night sky with pictures Majd has been taking of his chosen family for many years. Leifheit and Lyons have crafted a cinematic masterpiece that crackles with passion and intensity. 

Leifheit points to Daniel Arnold’s exquisite scenes of daily life, where the mysteries of existence reveal themselves amid the kind of serendipity that elevates the photograph to the realm of poetry. “It’s the first time to my knowledge that he’s allowed anyone to publish pictures that he’s taken in his personal life so there was a lot of trust there,” says Leifheit. “I feel so honoured that he allowed us to show these intimate moments happening in his home or with his family. Then we mixed his portfolio with the portraiture he does on commission for Interview, so some of the images are very close and others are for the world to see.”

With this latest issue of MATTE Magazine, Leifheit and Lyons help restore the photography periodical to its place in the pantheon in our brave new world. Liberated from the deluge of imagery flooding our feeds, the magazine offers a moment of respite in a relentless world. “People will listen to the same song or album on repeat all day long, and they return to these kinds of things for comfort,” Leifheit says. “I do that with photographs, where there are certain books or images that I’ve returned to for many years and always find something new or, or feel a different way about it as your life experience changes.”

Issue 62 of MATTE Magazine is available for pre-order here now