Last Look | by Gabrielle Larew

The first Christmas I spent away from home was when I lived in Prague. This photo by Matthew Monteith of a snow-covered tram, takes me back to that Christmas and the foreign and enticing sights and sounds of living there in 1994–1996. Winter mornings were dark with brown coal smoke and sounds of milk bottles clinking as they were delivered. When I look at this image, I am reminded of the hope and promise of being in the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution and the universal sentiment of Christmas cheer amidst stark reminders of the dark Soviet past.

Matthew Monteith graduated from the General Studies Program at the International Center of Photography in 1995, and earned an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2004. He was a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic from 2001–02 and the resulting work was published as Czech Edenby Aperture in 2007. He had a residency at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation in New York City in 2004–05 and received the Abigail Cohen Rome Prize in Photography from the American Academy in Rome in 2008. He has had solo exhibitions in Arles, Cherbourg, Kyoto, New York City, Paris and San Francisco. He has also participated in many group exhibitions internationally. He is represented by DOMA Gallery in Charlotte, NC. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design; he lives and works in Boston and New York.

The artist has given his permission to use the image.

by Gabrielle Larew 

http://domaart.com