Matthew Portch

I was born in Bristol, England and now live in Melbourne, Australia.

As a child I was a keen illustrator spending hours pouring over the minutia of detail of each subject matter.

I grew up through the seventies in the UK on a steady diet of North American culture via TV and Film. In the backdrop of this media was an exotic and colourful landscape that became an immediate antidote to the English, every-day life.

I studied Graphic Design and Photography in Bristol and pursued a successful career in Graphic Design.

In the millennium, the digital revolution of photography spurred my interest once more. Yet, ironically it was the North American large format colour film photographers of the sixties and seventies who inspired me. I was fascinated by the seemingly ordinary street scenes and vistas that were captured with fastidious detail.

I discovered a more modern and practical process in the form of a technical camera, digital back, and precision optics, then proceeded to cast my own journey.

When I photograph a scene, I capture everything across the frame in complete focus. Given the theme is so sedate, the detail of the picture is just as important to me as the subject matter and becomes a character of the image in itself.

I use the full-size of the sensor and never crop. I like to restrict myself to these disciplines as the one austere part of the image process – a digital reverence to the era of large format film if you will.

My creative vision is to capture a calm and austere disposition in the landscape and create a scene of discernible simplicity to evoke an emotional response from within.