In 1965 and 1967, two groups of NASA astronauts went to Iceland to get some field practice before going to the Moon: the island‘s most remote and hostile environments were assumed to be a good approximation of what they would have found on the Earth’s satellite. Upon discovering this story, 22 year-old British photographer Matthew Broadhead went to Iceland himself to follow the footsteps of those astronauts.
Matthew Broadhead is a British photographer based in Southwest England In July 2016, he graduated from the BA (Hons) Photography program at the University of Brighton and has since gained sustained recognition for his on-going body of work ASpace for Humans: The Moon on Earth (formerly titled Heimr). A Space for Humans was featured in The British Journal of Photography, Wallpaper*, The Exposed Issue 2 and Fisheye Vol. 1. He has also been selected as a winner for awards from Magnum, Photoworks and Organ Vida. Broadhead’s practice entails an engagement with photography as a critical medium and explores the conjunctions between different subjects, notably geology; anthropology; history; and mythology. His research in these areas is meant to change how he interacts with subjects in different contexts in addition to his recording methodology. Operating at the intersection between documentary and conceptual art, he creates fictional bodies of work based on factual source material.
