Blender Gallery is proud to present ‘Finding Beauty Where It Doesn’t Exist’ a collection of photographs by Matthew Johnstone.

Through Matthew Johnstone’s day-to-day job as an Art Director in advertising, the seeds of interest in photography were sprouted. Johnstone was fortunate to be exposed to brilliant work on a regular basis but it wasn’t until 1997 when a yearlong road trip round the USA inspired him to take his own photography a little more seriously.

“While camping in the Yosemite National Park in Northern California I participated in a workshop on how to take good pictures ‘of nature’. The woman taking the course said that the best pictures she had seen; were often taken by children.
Children, in her mind, weren’t constrained by what they thought was a good picture. They’d just simply lie down and take a picture of a cloud, or would shoot upside down, between their legs, take photos when they weren’t even looking and snapped pictures of things that weren’t of ‘traditional’ interest. They saw things differently. This simple lesson, in many ways, inspired the way I looked through my viewfinder. What can I see that no one else can? “ – Matthew Johnstone

As an Art Director, for someone who has spent a greater part of their career studying type, composition and colour, Johnstone found America a “visual pig out”.

“I loved all the fantastic old signage and colours that graced the streets. As I didn’t know many people when I first got there,­ I spent a lot of my spare time exploring and ‘hunting’ images. “

For Johnstone, two things became evident around this time. One was that he found photography had the amazing side affect of keeping him keenly in the moment. Johnstone shoots mostly at dawn or dusk and is constantly racing against the sun. This tends to place a heightened awareness of where he is and what he is looking at.

Secondly, Johnstone became increasingly drawn to older industrial areas, shipyards, railway lines and run down parts of the city. “Finding beauty where it doesn’t (typically) exist, was then and is still now, what keeps my trigger finger happy. Thousands of photographs later I can’t really explain why these 30 plus photographs stand out from others, other than for the simple reason that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Matthew Johnstone has exhibited extensively in San Francisco and New York. His photographs have been purchased for Modern Art Museum Collections and published in various books including Here is New York. A Democracy in Photographs, which came out as a tribute and record of September 11. He has also received numerous awards throughout his Advertising Career.