I thought sharing the work of Matthew Avignone would be an appropriate follow up to yesterday’s Mother’s Day Exhibition.  Last year Matthew submitted an image to the Father’s Day Exhibition with the explanation that he was the oldest of five children of different races adopted by his parents and that he was working of a series about his unique family titled Stranger Than Family. It’s a body of work where the images transcend the subject matter, but stay rooted in the celebration of the ordinary within an extraordinary family.

Matthew holds a BA in Photography from Columbia College  in Chicago, was nominated for the 2012 Baum Award for Emerging American Photographer, took 2nd runner up in the Photography Book Now Competition presented by Blurb and was exhibited in the Pingyao Photography Festival in Pingyao, China. His first artist monograph An Unfinished Body currently resides in the permanent collections of the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY and the International Center of Photography, New York, NY. The book, An Unfinished Body, is a handmade signature sewn book consisting of 30 family documents and 50 original photographs.