Matthew Brandt, American, born 1982
Bridge over Flint 8, 2016
This photograph is part of American photographer Matthew Brandt’s “Bridges Over Flint” project in which Brandt developed the photographs using a solution that includes Flint, Michigan, tap water. His series incorporates photographs of numerous locations around Flint in black and white developed with the tap water solution. As a result of the lead and other toxins in Flint’s water, the image is distorted through the development process. This mirrors the way in which the people of Flint are also affected—developed—by their interactions with the water and the deleterious effects it has had (and continues to have) on their health as well as the city more broadly. It seems significant to me that the photographs are of bridges in particular as they one remind me of Pauli’s reflection(s) on how he tried to build bridges within the Flint community and the ways that bridges serve as infrastructural linkages between potentially disparate populations. Label by Jay Jolles
Developed using lead-contaminated tap water from the photographed location of Flint, Michigan, Matthew Brandt’s Bridge Over Flint 24 shows a nearly unidentifiable bridge across a small river with trees on the embankments on either side. The distortion of the photo and it’s edges is intense, looking almost as though it was singed in a fire. Rather than flames, though, the photo’s visual corruption comes from the byproduct of Flint’s own political corruption: residential water so contaminated with lead as to be completely unsafe and unusable. By employing the invisible danger in his work, Brandt makes visible, quite literally, the destructive nature of lead. Label by Lia Deasy