As It Truly Is is an exhibition of photographs and books by Matthew Cohen. The title is an homage to poet Archibald MacLeish’s statement after seeing Apollo 8’s ‘Earthrise’ photograph. “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats,” MacLeish wrote, “is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold…” MacLeish’s statement informs Cohen's desire to record a palpable understanding of physical and emotional distance through photography.
The exhibition features Cohen’s two primary modes of working, a geographic investigation of distance and a grasping at understanding that which feels distant. Sublime landscapes and images of trail markers are put in relationship with still lifes and portraits of that which is emotionally close and physically far. It is through this combination that the distance can be understood and closed.
