Matuschka is an American photographer, artist, and activist, whose multidisciplinary practice has explored the body, identity, beauty, and women's representation for more than five decades. Her work is particularly significant at the intersection of analog photography, feminist art, and activism.
Born in NJ, Matuschka began her modeling and photography career simultaneously, posing for regional photographers and working alongside them in their darkrooms starting in 1970. At the age of 17 she moved to the Berkshires to attend Windsor Mountain Prep School and apprenticed with Clemens Kalischer. Soon thereafter, she began her (life-long) mentorship with Don Snyder who taught her the art of chemically manipulating prints. In 1974 she moved to NYC to attend SVA and continued posing for photographers on assignment for Milton Glaser’s Push Pin Studios. Her work as a fine art model for renowned photographers was essential in the development of her own practice as a fine art photographer later in life. She has worked with some of the world’s most renowned photographers, including Nadav Kander, Nick Knight, Bill Silano, Gerald Malanga, Bill Cunningham, Anton Perich and John Loenguard to name a few.
Since the 70s Matuschka’s heroine seemed ideally created for women; one who is strong, unafraid, and unashamed. Whether it be photos of her naked body in a roadside lake, her iconic one-breasted images to raise awareness, or her own amusement with cross-dressing, Matuschka confronts you on her own terms and asks of you something you may have never felt before: a new acceptance and love for the human body, with no beauty ideal attached to it.
The artist is credited with helping change the environment for Breast Cancer awareness, launching the Breast Cancer movement in the early 90s alongside WHAM! and exposing the environmental link to cancer with GreenPeace.
Her self-portrait on the Sunday cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1993 was chosen by LIFE for a special edition entitled 100 Photographs that Changed the World published in 2003 and again in 2011. The artist has been nominated for many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, and has received dozens of citations, honors, and citations for her photographic works, and activism since the early 1990s. In 2011 John Loengard included her in his monograph: The Age of Silver: Encounters with Great Photographers.
Currently, Matuschka lives in New York City and is working on her archives and books. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of many prominent museums such as The Museum of the City of New York, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, The Photographic Museum of Helsinki, in addition to institutions such as Northwestern University, Broadway Video Enterprises, (Lorne Michaels’ Collection), The Center for the Study of Political Graphics and The New York University Library. Her photographs continue to be published and exhibited in Europe, Canada and the United States regularly.
Todays Matuschka’s practice involves experimenting with printing and painting techniques both in the digital and analog mediums. She is an active philanthropic patron of wildlife foundations, and is involved in rescuing, rehabilitating and housing both wild and domestic birds for over 20 years. Her roommate is a 3-year-old Mexican conure named Pistachio.
