“Existence is all the same matter, just over time. We are all the same. I am that, that is this, this is me.” – Michael Hauptman
Photographed between 2006 and 2018, New York-based photographer Michael Hauptman’s first monograph, Of Matter and Time is a personal meditation on the interdependence between humans, nature and technology.
Despite the ostensibly documentary nature of his work, Hauptman often uses digital manipulation on his photographs, superimposing multiple images onto one another, altering a backdrop or placing a halo-like glow around a subject to emphasize their figure, and to evoke mysteries of time and space.
“Will we use advancements in technology to bring us closer to one another and to our planet? Or will “progress” continue to isolate humanity – distancing us from one another, removing us from the natural world, and the human experiences that sustain us? I will forever choose to believe the former. For Earthlings, kindness and community. Tonight we breathe and tomorrow we push.” – Michael Hauptman
Michael Hauptman (b1984, Iowa) was raised in a community founded on meditation and eastern philosophy. He started taking photographs in his early teens when his grandparents gave him his first camera. Drawing on both his upbringing and his deep commitment to environmental and social issues, Hauptman’s creative approach looks to examine and represent the intersection between human experience and digital manipulation. Hauptman has produced work for Gucci, Levi’s, Louis Vuitton, Marni, Nike. Magazines: Buffalo Zine, Dazed, Double, Dust, More Or Less, Re-Edition, NYT T Style Magazine, The Face, Vogue Italia. He currently resides and works in New York.
Michael Hauptman’s Of Matter and Time is published by Damiani at £50 €55 www.damianieditore.com
