Mathew Keenan (b.1985).
The obsession with selfies is an important starting point to my practice, which has developed into using self-portraiture to question society and received values. Over the past 5 years I have been working on a larger body of work that has looked at British male identity. Using self-portraiture and still life, I have researched themes of masculinity, sexuality, gender fluidity and plural identity and how these interplay with the culture in the North West of England.
For the past 2 years I have worked with large format cameras. This is important to my practice as creating images with a view camera and producing prints in the darkroom allows for a more tangible and tactile connection to the image making process. This more arduous process of image making forces a longer period of reflection and time spent with each image. Finding meaning in the finely detailed rendering and of the traditional themes to be unpicked.
Find out more about Matthew Keenan here.
