Matthew Pillsbury: City Stages

An interview with Matthew Pillsbury on the occasion of his City Stages monograph and exhibition.

Over the past decade, Matthew Pillsbury has built several extensive bodies of work—Screen Lives, Time Frame, and City Stages—that deal with different facets of contemporary metropolitan life and the passage of time. Working with black-and-white 8-by-10 film and long exposures, Pillsbury captures a range of psychologically charged experiences in the urban environment, from isolation—tuned into the omnipresent screens of our tablets, laptops, televisions, and phones—to crowded museums, parades, cathedrals, and even protests.

The City Stages monograph and exhibition gather selections from all three bodies of work for the first time, spanning ten years of the artist’s output.