I found photography while studying music at university. It was a distraction; an all-consuming illicit habit, like smoking cigarettes. Hard to imagine needing an escape from something you're passionate about, I know, but that's what it felt like. It was a drug. 

I found photography while studying music at university. It was a distraction; an all-consuming illicit habit, like smoking cigarettes. Hard to imagine needing an escape from something you're passionate about, I know, but that's what it felt like. It was a drug. 

I'm just old enough to have learned photography through the medium of film. I set up a crude darkroom of my own, kept strange chemicals under the sink in my shared apartment, disappeared in the basement for hours on beautiful, sunny Montréal afternoons. Film is magic -you click the shutter, you wait, dying of anticipation to relive the moment captured, it was days, weeks, months, eons ago- then there it is, you're holding it in your hand on a 5x7 piece of paper, the moment intact, exactly as you left it. To this day, it remains an insatiable hunger. 

Now, half a career away and still living in Montréal (I can't quit you), I find myself behind a lens, with a sore neck, hunting moments like small game. This city is ethereal, cold (or hot), stark and beautiful. Its people are warm, proud, sad, bursting at the seams, ecstatic, sleepy, sore, light as air. There are so many ideas here. In Montréal, you can still make something grand out of very little. 

I want to take photos of you. I want us to use as much film as we can, because it's non-linear and beautiful. I want to be at your wedding, behind a lens, creating a visual document that will stand the test of time; not just arrange a few electrons for a fleeting moment only to see them disappear once they've been scrolled past. Let's get together, find some nice light, and make some magic. 

xo

Matthew