Film Photo Visionary Project Award: Matthew Leifheit

Film Photo Visionary Project Award: Matthew Leifheit by Aline SmithsonMay 6, 2021

©Matthew Leifheit

Matthew Leifheit is a Brooklyn, New York based photographer whose work deals with gay history and the erosion of time. With the support of the Film Photo Award Film Grant, Matthew will continue his project Last Sunset. This photographic exploration of gay life in South Florida surveys the legacy of “the Stonewall Generation” of LGBTQ baby boomers through a combination of archival research, written interviews, environmental portraiture and street photography. “I am interested in their transitional status as a group that has gone from being illegal in their lifetime to being seen as relatively conventional by today’s standards,” he explains. “I think of these people as my cultural predecessors, and as a group on the brink of disappearance they are of urgent importance to photograph.” Leifheit uses a Graflex 4×5 and a Nikon F 35mm camera.

The Film Photo Award is open to all emerging, established, and student photographers worldwide. Each award period provides three distinct grants of Kodak Professional Film and complimentary film processing by Griffin Editions to photographers who demonstrate a serious commitment to the field and are motivated to continue the development of still, film-based photography in the 21st century. The Spring 2021 grants were juried by Paddy Johnson of Art F City, previous Film Photo Award recipient Jon Henry, and Film Photo Award founder Eliot Dudik. @filmphotoaward

©Matthew Leifheit

Matthew Leifheit (born 1988, Chicago, IL) is an American photographer, magazine-editor, publisher, and professor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is Editor-in-Chief of MATTE Magazine, a platform for new ideas in photography founded by Leifheit in 2010. He was formerly the photo director of Vice Magazine, and has written criticism and interviews about art and photography for Aperture, Vice, Art F City, and Time. Leifheit holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, where he was awarded the Richard Benson Prize in 2017. He is currently on faculty at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Leifheit’s photographic work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public collections including the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art Library and Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Them, Gayletter, Out, Vice, and The Yale Daily News.

Leifheit’s work deals with gay history and the erosion of time. With the support of the Film Photo Award film grant, he will continue his project Last Sunset. This photographic exploration of gay life in South Florida surveys the legacy of “the Stonewall Generation” of LGBTQ baby boomers through a combination of archival research, written interviews, environmental portraiture and street photography. “I am interested in their transitional status as a group that has gone from being illegal in their lifetime to being seen as relatively conventional by today’s standards,” he explains. “I think of these people as my cultural predecessors, and as a group on the brink of disappearance they are of urgent importance to photograph.”