Matthew Shain

Matthew Shain (b. San Francisco, 1978) earned a BS in Journalism with an emphasis on creative advertising from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2000. Realizing that he found the ontology of images more compelling than the commercial information his work at the time actually carried, Shain pursued a second degree in visual art, earning a BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts in 2005. Eventually wanting to push his practice further, he pursued a graduate degree from UC Riverside, earning an MFA in Visual Art in 2012. After that experience, while living in Los Angeles, Shain was fortunate enough to start working closely with MacArthur Fellow Uta Barth as an artist assistant and studio manager. They worked together for two and a half years until Shain moved to New Orleans to teach photography at Tulane University. It was in New Orleans where his Post-Monuments project began. Shain has since had to move back to San Francisco, but maintains close, personal connections to New Orleans. Matthew has exhibited work in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and New Orleans. His work is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Special Collections of Rivera Library at UC Riverside. He has been published in several journals, including Humble Arts Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography (2008), Harper’s Ferry Review (ASU Press), New York Magazine, VICE.com and TIME Magazine.