Dear Friend,
It's September 9th and domestic USA print club subscribers should have received their prints by now ! For international orders, they are on their way !
As always, I'm publishing more photos from the print club photo shoot and posting the letter I sent along with it !
I’ve always wanted my pictures to be more than merely a taxonomic record of everyone I’ve slept with. But lately I’ve been wondering what’s wrong with that? My background is in a very particular academic set of the art world and because of that, I always tried to make sure my pictures contain an element of classicism. I was careful not to show too much dick, careful to reference a historically significant painting. It was always about “good taste.”
Truthfully, I am exhausted trying to have “good taste.” After all, Courbet’s most famous painting, “The Origin of the World” is literally just a close up of a woman’s vagina. Why should horny gay nudes have any less artistic merit ? And even if they do have less artistic merit, who cares? I think, in general, people should do what they want. And it seems that over the years the main things I’ve wanted to do in my life are jerk off and look at naked men. So, to that end, here is a picture of Andrea, a handsome man from Italy who I met in Paris in the Fall of 2024. Andrea is studying to be an actor and lives mostly in Paris with his partner.
I don’t have a huge amount to say about our interaction except that we were naked together for a short time. I photographed him, and then he left for a date. We did not have sex, but made plans to meet again, which we never did. I’ve always loved this photo of him, soft, vulnerable, alive.
“Living means moving forward,” Charlotte Perriand, a furniture designer I’ve recently become infatuated with, used to say, and September seems like the perfect time to reflect on those words. The changing season is for generating new ideas and modes of being. So as I turn myself toward embracing my work as simply a taxonomic record of hot men I’ve slept with or wanted to sleep with, I hope you too find something beautiful to embrace about yourself, and find a way to share it.
Have a great month!
X
Matthew
PS
I wanted to share a few notes about the contents of this package. First, the cyanotype postcard. I thought it would be fun to start making cyanotypes, which are basically contact printed negatives on light sensitive paper. If you’re interested, John Dugdale created some beautiful cyanotypes worth taking a look at. Moving forward I also plan to include a culture card which will have a playlist and film recommendation. I hope you enjoy !