South City, 2018

“I was inspired by the way a car can steal the show. Think of iconic car chases in films—it’s often about spectacle and has little to do with advancing a narrative. And that’s the way I think of these cars, as dead-end technologies, but also as high-performance machines which, for their audience, sought to reflect the spirit and attitudes of their time.” —Matthew Porter Aperture is pleased to offer a special limited-edition photograph by Matthew Porter in celebration of his publication, Matthew Porter: The Heights (Aperture, 2019). South City, 2018 is a work from his widely popular Flying Cars series. Here we see the classic 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle captured midair over city streets. Each photograph in the series is a freeze-frame—a hypothetical film still from a pulp fiction scene.  A hybrid of hyperreality and studied topographic description, part bittersweet nostalgia, and part ironic reinvention of a classic American trope.

Archival Pigment Print
Paper Size: 16 x 20 inches
Image Size: 14 x 18 inches
Edition of 20 and 5 Artist’s Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Matthew Porter (b. 1978, Manchester, New Hampshire) is a graduate of Bard College and of the ICP-Bard MFA Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, New York. His work was included in Photography Is Magic (Aperture, 2015), and his first book, Archipelago, was published in 2015. Porter’s work is represented by M+B, Los Angeles, and Invisible-Exports, New York. He lives and works in Brooklyn.