This essay examines contemporary race and class disparities in the Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood. The project is titled, “Sin & Salvation in Baptist Town.”
Matt Eich was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1986 and is the oldest of four children. He grew up in the peanut-farming town of Suffolk, Virginia. Watching his grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease was a formative experience and a road trip with his grandfather cemented his early relationship with photography.
Eich began working as a freelance photographer while studying photojournalism at Ohio University for clients that include GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, TIME, FADER, Harper’s, National Geographic, Apple, Tiffany & Company, Universal Republic Records and others.
Matt has been named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch and participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2009. He has worked with support of grants from ShootQ/Pictage, NPPA, Aaron Siskind Foundation, the Alexia Foundation and National Geographic Magazine. His work has been shown internationally and his prints are in the permanent collections of The Portland Art Museum and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
These days Eich lives in Norfolk, Virginia with his wife and two children while compulsively documenting everything around him and preparing for a solo exhibition at The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.
