238 - Diana Matar

Using photography, testimony and archive, Diana Matar's in-depth bodies of work investigate themes of history, memory and state sponsored violence. Grounded in heavy research and often spending years on a project, Diana attempts to capture the invisible traces of human history and produces installations and books that query what role aesthetics might playin the depiction of power. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Diana has received the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art; the International Fund for Documentary Photography; a Ford Foundation Grant for artists making work on history and memory; and twice been awarded an Arts Council of England Individual Artist Grant. Her work is held in public and private collections and has been exhibited in numerous institutions including Tate Modern, London; The National Museum of Singapore; Museum Folkswang, Essen, Germany; The Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Musee de la Photographie a Charleroi. Her monograph Evidencewas published in 2014 by Schilt Publishing Amsterdam to critical acclaim and chosen by New York Times Photography critic Teju Cole as one of two best photography books of the year. In 2019 Matar was appointed Distinguished Artist at Barnard College Columbia University, New York. In April 2024 Diana’s most recent book, My America, was published by GOST Books. 

In episode 238, Diana discusses, among other things:

• Early experiences in Panama and Latin America.
• How an errand to buy a lightbulb changed everything.
• A brush with Manuel Noriega.
• How she met her Libyan husband, the writer Hisham Matar.
• Why she found doing her M.A. ‘really, really challenging’.
• Her first book project, Evidence.
• The inclusion of her own writing in the book.
• Her latest book, My America.
• Some of the key factors around the issue of police shootings.
• The complexities of the subject.
• How she has “intermalised a European sense of America.”
• Why she shot the project on her iPhone and the rules she imposed on herself.
• Whether photographs can ‘bear the burden of history.’
• What she is currently working on.
• Her reaction to the bonus questions.

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“I think I internalised a European sense of America in several different ways. When I was out on the road a lot of things seemed exotic to me, things that I’d grown up with and were just part of being: the long distances; these buildings that just pop up in the middle of nowhere; the emptiness; the scale… the kind of watching of movies of what is the American west. The internalisation I think has something to do with scale. I live in London - the small streets, you’re around people all the time, and then being in this openness, which i miss and i love, but I did find it unnerving and it effected how I made the work actually.”

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