Stateside is an ongoing exploration of modern day America and the dissolution of The American Dream. The land of promise that flourished in the industrial boom post 1945 had reached its peak by the mid 1970’s by which time a gradual decline had firmly taken root rendering once prosperous towns and communities to ruin. The series explores the impact of the economic downturn and its consequence on both the communities and the vast landscape of the United States.

British born, but living in the United States for the last 25 years, Matt Wilson’s photographs take us beyond any given time or place. Using expired and de-graded film stock, Wilson’s images have a poetic, almost filmic sensibility. The narrative is non-linear, evoking a classic American ‘road trip’ but avoiding obvious clichés and over-romanticisation. Wilson’s landscapes appear faded and worn out, perhaps like contemporary America itself. The humans he fleetingly encounters along the way seem out of time and out of luck, but not beaten down.

A lightness of touch and singular vision, creating depth of field and always using natural light rather than flash, produce a coherent body of work from photographic fragments – each roadside encounter, landscape and place seems charged with narrative potential.