Excited to share that my carbon print Fireman’s Drinking Fountain is included in Here and Now: 100 Years of LUAG, 100 Local Artists at Lehigh University Art Galleries!
LUAG Main Gallery, Zoellner Arts Center September 2, 2025 – May 22, 2026
This centennial exhibition celebrates the incredible range of artists in the Lehigh Valley. Grateful to be part of such a milestone moment for LUAG!
This exhibition focuses on the innovative exploration in photography from two talented artists. Matthew Blum and Adam Atkinson both push the boundaries of process, subject matter, and presences within the practice of photography. Armature for Aperture focuses on the key components of composition, value and the structures that support the space between the lens, the artist, and the subject itself. Each artist’s body of work represents a very specific intent in the broad conversation of capturing emotion, relevance, and relation to the human experience.
In this exhibition, Matthew explores aspects of Nature and Machine. By using various processes such as palladium, cyanotype, and silver gelatin, he matches the feeling of each subject to the image.
“With my photography, I prefer traditional ways of photography printing. Depending on the subject, I’ll use the best suited camera as a brush to capture the scene. Once captured each photograph is hand-printed individually in the darkroom.”
Allentown native Matthew Blum is a visual artist who has exhibited in prestigious galleries around the Lehigh Valley. He got his start in the arts by working on local feature movies. While working in film-making he did a range of tasks such as editing and director of photography. From film-making, his interest in still photography developed with an eye for storytelling. His exploration into film began with a modest 35mm darkroom. Later that darkroom set up grew to large format 4 X 5. Today,his preferred printing processes include palladium,cyanotype,and silver gelatin.
“Windows to the Past: Lehigh County” was an exhibition by Matthew Blum that ran from October 24 to November 21, 2019. Blum’s photography brought to life the historic edifices of Lehigh County, places etched in time and registered as national treasures. Utilizing a palette of historical photo printing techniques, from cyanotype to palladium, he captured the essence of structures like the Burnside Plantation and Americus Hotel. The show was not just a visual journey but an educational experience, culminating in a workshop and closing reception that engaged and enlightened the community.
The Bethlehem House Contemporary Art Gallery’s Holiday Show, spanning from October 18, 2019, to January 11, 2020, highlighted the artistry of InVision Festival artist Matthew Blum. His ambrotypes, with their spectral elegance, framed historic landmarks in a dialogue between past and present. Blum’s pieces offered a unique view through the ambrotype process, standing out in the collection as profound meditations on time and architecture.
In 2015, “Glass Portraits,” an ambrotype photography exhibition by Matthew Blum, offered a stirring collection of portraits that captured the very essence of each subject using the wet plate collodion process. Dating back to the 1850s, this time-honored technique produces images with a haunting depth and a timeless quality unmatched by digital photography. Every portrait was a one-of-a-kind piece, showcasing not just the subject’s likeness but also the distinctive quirks of the medium—its unpredictability and the fascinating ways it responds to light and chemicals.
Presented in the Alternative Gallery at Artsfest 2015, “Glass Portraits” invited viewers to reflect on the permanence of glass, the fluidity of time, and the profound simplicity of the human face. It served as a powerful reminder of the enduring value of traditional photographic methods, which connect us to history in a tangible, visceral way. Through “Glass Portraits,” Blum not only preserved a nearly lost art form but also breathed new life into it, inspiring contemporary audiences to appreciate the beauty of this old-world craft.
