Matthew Chasney is an Ohio-based photographer specializing in social documentary, editorial, and photojournalism. His work has appeared in Dangerous Minds and Afterimage magazines. He has had two solo exhibitions and has produced two books, Silos (2017) and The Hope Memorial (2019). In 2019 he was commissioned to produce a billboard for the For Freedoms project.
Contact the artist by email: @matthew_chasney
“My intent for Cleveland 20/20 was not to celebrate Cleveland, but to reflect it as it is. Cleveland is one of the poorest cities in the nation and also among the most segregated; between 2010 and 2015, more than 10,000 children were poisoned by lead. I began the project intending to focus on themes of housing inequality, poverty, and gentrification. As a visual reference I drew inspiration from Humphrey Spender’s 1930s photographs of the English working class and the portraiture of Alec Soth. I sought to use sparse compositions to emphasize the loneliness of displacement. I worked predominantly in the newly revitalized West Side neighborhoods of Tremont, Ohio City, and Gordon Square, as these places showcase the collision between the long time, working class residents and the recent, bourgeois residents who are rapidly displacing them.”
