Matthew Russell Rolston is an American artist, photographer, director and creative director,[1] known for his lighting techniques[2] and detailed approach to art direction and design. Rolston has been identified throughout his career with the revival and modern expression of Hollywood glamour.[3]
Rolston's career spans the areas of photography, film, creative direction, experiential design (including hospitality development), branding, product design, fine art, publishing and arts education.[4]
While still a student at ArtCenter, Rolston received an assignment from American artist Andy Warhol,[7] for Warhol's celebrity focused Interview magazine, which served as his "discovery". Thereafter, he began a successful career in photography. Rolston began shooting covers and editorial assignments for founding editor Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, as well as for other publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Vanity Fair, W and The New York Times Magazine. Rolston has completed thousands of photoshoots in his career, including over 100 covers for Rolling Stone.[8]
Rolston's images have been exhibited at institutions and museums in solo and group shows including Beauty CULTure (with Lauren Greenfield, Herb Ritts, Andres Serrano, and Carrie Mae Weems, 2011),[9]The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, California; The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion (curated by Mark Francis and Margery King),[10]The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1997); and Fashion and Surrealism, FIT Gallery, New York, 1987 (traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK, 1988).[11]
A series of monographs have been published of Rolston's works including Big Pictures, A Book of Photographs (1991), a selection of images from the artist's first decade as a photographer, with an introduction by American film director Tim Burton. It was published by Bulfinch Press, New York.
beautyLIGHT, Pictures at a Magazine (2008), is a survey of more than twenty years of Rolston's editorial portraits. It was published by teNeues, Germany.
Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits (2012), is a fine art series consisting of large color portraits of ventriloquist dummies held in a rare museum collection.[12] It was published by Pointed Leaf Press, New York.
Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles (2017), is a retrospective capturing the artist’s work in mid-career. It was published by teNeues, Germany.
In 2021, Laguna Art Museum published Matthew Rolston, Art People: The Pageant Portraits, an exhibition catalog.[13]
Twenty selections[14] of Rolston’s work were gifted to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2024. The acquisition was led by Getty Curator of Photographs Paul Martineau. The selection highlights images from Rolston's Hollywood Royale retrospective.[15]
Rolston established a documentary production unit called ‘R-ROLL’, a verbal play on industry reference to ‘B-roll’, that is – the capturing of behind-the-scenes footage. The ‘R’ is for Rolston. Added Rolston: “there's an overwhelming demand for filmed content, as clients expand their reach beyond traditional media."[17]
R-ROLL has produced projects for Time, Inc., Amazon.com, ESPN, A&E/Lifetime Networks, SBE Entertainment Group and Virgin Hotels among others. Said Rolston, "We're now entering an era where the ‘making of' is just as important as the ‘of'. And clients seem to enjoy the integration of our media services. Print, film, design, documentary, you might say we're a ‘one-stop-shop'."[18]
Rolston diversified into creative direction and branding, developing projects in experiential design, including hospitality projects and product design.[20]
With a 2024 project, The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel, Rolston expanded his creative direction practice into the museum world. Serving as the creative director for multiplatinum recording artist Jewel, he oversaw the creation of a life-size hologram for the artist's collaboration with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.[25] This hologram, positioned in the atrium lobby of the museum, acted as the centerpiece of an immersive installation, greeting visitors to the site.[26]
Fine art
Rolston has created four photographic fine art projects that have led to a series of publications and exhibitions:
Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits consists of monumentally scaled color portraits of ventriloquial figures housed in the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.[12] This was Rolston's first self-assigned photographic series and debuted at Diane Rosenstein Fine Art in Los Angeles.[27] It has since travelled to venues in Miami[28] and Berlin, among others.[29] Rolston's third published monograph accompanied the exhibition.
Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles - which includes Rolston's fourth monograph, as well as a travelling exhibition - is a retrospective of his editorial portraits from 1977 to 1993.[30][31] Edited by long-time Los Angeles–based gallerist and curator David Fahey, this series presents an array of portraits that capture the 1980s and its myriad talents.[32] From Michael Jackson and Madonna, to Prince, George Michael and Cyndi Lauper, the selection of images reflects the era.
Art People: The Pageant Portraits is a series of emotionally-intimate portraits of participants in “Pageant of the Masters", a tableaux vivants entertainment that is part of an annual arts festival held in Laguna Beach, California.[33][34] The project features dramatically scaled color prints;[35] one installation alone is over thirty feet wide. Ralph Pucci International first exhibited this series in its Los Angeles gallery in 2017,[36] and this work became Rolston's first solo institutional exhibition on the West Coast when it opened Summer 2021 at Laguna Art Museum.[37]
Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits, as yet unpublished, is another dramatically scaled color portrait series, this depicting Christian mummies housed in the Capuchin Catacombs of Sicily.[38] The project is, according to Rolston "a meditation on mortality";[39] it represents the artist's continuing evolution as a photographer and is an attempt to elevate his portraiture to a conceptual level.[39]
Rolston has stated his purpose with art-making is to "pose questions about the things that make us most human."[40]
Teaching
In 1998, Rolston established the Matthew Rolston Scholarship for Film and Creative Direction at ArtCenter College of Design. Said Rolston, "the scholarship is intended to promote cross-disciplinary studies between film and other creative practices".[4]
In 2015 Rolston became an adjunct professor and curricular advisor to ArtCenter College's Undergraduate and Graduate Film Departments and continues to lecture and mentor there in the fields of marketing and communications strategy, fashion communications, luxury branding and public service messaging.[4] At ArtCenter, Rolston teaches two original courses which he conceived of and wrote. The first, centering on marketing communications, is called The Power of Pleasure. And the second class, named Conscious Communication, centers on messaging in the public interest.[41] Rolston's classes are situated within ArtCenter's film program, however they invite members from diverse disciplines including advertising and creative direction, photography and imaging, fine art, and other courses of study offered at the college.[41]
Within the structure of the classes, students create short form films in an atmosphere similar to that of a professional communications agency with Rolston acting as instructor, mentor and creative director and the students enacting the roles of individual writer/director ‘makers’.[42]
An illustrated textbook of Rolston's The Power of Pleasure, based on his original syllabus and lectures, is currently under development.
Books
Matthew Rolston, Art People: The Pageant Portraits – Lucia | Marquand, published by Laguna Art Museum, 2021
Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles – teNeues, 2017
beautyLIGHT: Pictures at a Magazine – teNeues, 2008
Big Pictures: A Book of Photographs – A Bulfinch Press Book, 1991
James Danziger: Visual Aid – Pantheon, October 12, 1986.
Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett: The Andy Warhol Diaries – Warner Books, May 1989, p.599-600ss.
Mark Francis, Margery King: The Warhol Look: Glamour Style Fashion – Bulfinch, October 1997, p.246, 252-253ss.
Steve Reiss, Neil Feineman: Thirty Frames Per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music Video – Harry N. Abrams, October 1, 2000, p.26, 206-211ss.
Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena: Video Thrills The Radio Star. Musikvideos: Geschichte, Themen, Analysen – Bielefeld 2005, p.27ss.
Sarah Mower: 20 Years Dolce & Gabbana – Slp edition, 5Continents, November 2005.
Trey Laird: Individuals: Portraits from the Gap Collection – Melcher Media, October 30, 2006, p.37, 59, 82, 94, 98, 104, 120, 230ss.
Justyn Barnes, Nate Giorgio, David Nordahl Jordan Sommers: The Official Michael Jackson Opus – OPUS Media Group, December 7, 2009, "The Last Sitting," p.242-247ss.
Charles Churchward: Herb Ritts: The Golden Hour: A Photographer's Life and His World – Rizzoli, October 26, 2010, p.74-77, 79, 82–83, 99, 130, 207, 295, 311ss.
Kathy Ryan: The New York Times Magazine Photographs – Thames & Hudson, September 30, 2011, p.304-305ss.
Uta Barth is a contemporary German-American photographer whose work addresses themes such as perception, optical illusion and non-place. Her early work emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s, "inverting the notion of background and foreground" in photography and bringing awareness to a viewer's attention to visual information with in the photographic frame. Her work is as much about vision and perception as it is about the failure to see, the faith humans place in the mechanics of perception, and the precarious nature of perceptual habits. Barth's says this about her art practice: “The question for me always is how can I make you aware of your own looking, instead of losing your attention to thoughts about what it is that you are looking at." She has been honored with two National Endowments of the Arts fellowships, was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004‑05, and was a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. Barth lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer whose work focuses on the details of things, presented as flat surfaces to create a new image independent of the original subject. He was closely involved with, if not a part of, the abstract expressionist movement, and was close friends with painters Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
Manuel Álvarez Bravo was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes at the [Academy of San Carlos], his photography is self-taught. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with its artistic peak between the 1920s and 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or Surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. He had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970. His work was recognized by the UNESCO Memory of the World registry in 2017.
Margrethe Mather was an American photographer. She was one of the best known female photographers of the early 20th century. Initially she influenced and was influenced by Edward Weston while working in the pictorial style, but she independently developed a strong eye for patterns and design that transformed some of her photographs into modernist abstract art. She lived a mostly uncompromising lifestyle in Los Angeles that alternated between her photography and the creative Hollywood community of the 1920s and 1930s. In later life she abandoned photography, and she died unrecognized for her photographic accomplishments.
"in artistic matters Margaret was, of course, the teacher, Edward (Weston) the pupil" — Imogen Cunningham
Graciela Iturbide is a Mexican photographer. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in many major museum collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Louise Emma Augusta Dahl-Wolfe was an American photographer. She is known primarily for her work for Harper's Bazaar, in association with fashion editor Diana Vreeland. At Harper's Bazaar she pioneered a new standard in color photography.
Lauren Greenfield is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, a documentary series, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
Julius Shulman was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph "Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect." The house is also known as the Stahl House. Shulman's photography spread the aesthetic of California's Mid-century modern architecture around the world. Through his many books, exhibits and personal appearances his work ushered in a new appreciation for the movement beginning in the 1990s.
Lisette Model was an Austrian-born American photographer primarily known for the frank humanism of her street photography.
Luc Delahaye is a French photographer known for his large-scale color works depicting conflicts, world events or social issues. His pictures are characterized by detachment, directness and rich details, a documentary approach which is however countered by dramatic intensity and a narrative structure.
Miyako Ishiuchi, is a Japanese photographer.
Edmund Rudolph Teske was a 20th-century American photographer who combined a career of taking portraits of artists, musicians and entertainers with a prolific output of experimental photography. His use of techniques like: combined prints, montages and solarizations led to "often romantic and mysterious images". Although he exhibited extensively and was well known within artistic photography circles during his lifetime, his work was not widely known by the public. He has been called "one of the forgotten greats of American photography."
Douglas McCulloh is an American photographer notable for conceptual photographic projects based on "systematic randomness" and chance operations. McCulloh's work is "an extension of the traditions of street photography, social documentary photography, oral history and Surrealist chance operations", states photo historian Jonathan Green. "As such, it is grounded in some of the century's most powerful conceptual currents." McCulloh is one of six photographers who in 2006 transformed an F-18 jet hangar into the world's largest camera to make The Great Picture, the world's largest photograph. McCulloh also curates exhibitions, most notably Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists, the first major museum exhibition of work by blind photographers. McCulloh, under the nom-de-plume "Quoteman", has also collected and posted online thousands of quotations about photography.
Fred Robert Archer, was an American photographer who collaborated with Ansel Adams to create the Zone System. He was a portrait photographer, specializing early in his career in portraits of Hollywood movie stars. He was associated with the artistic trend in photography known as pictorialism. He later became a photography teacher, and ran his own photography school for many years.
Alex Prager is an American artist, director, and screenwriter based in Los Angeles.
Anthony Friedkin is an American photographer whose works have chronicled California's landscapes, cities and people. His topics include phenomena such as surf culture, prisons, cinema, and gay culture. Friedkin’s photographs have been exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. His photographs are included in major Museum collections: New York's Museum of Modern Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum and others. He is represented in numerous private collections as well. His pictures have been published in Japan, Russia, Europe, and many Fine Art magazines in America.
Andrea Jarvis Hamilton is a conceptual artist and fine-art photographer best known for her extensive series of photographic images of the ocean, natural phenomena and the Kelvin scale. Her work encompasses the long term, systematic collection of subjects within a strict conceptual framework, creating expansive archives. These are retrospectively organised according to common visual characteristics into series which highlight certain themes: the nature of time and memory, climate change, colour theory and being. Her work also encompasses still life, long exposure, landscape and portraiture, street photography and landscape.
Anthony Hernandez is an American photographer who divides his time between Los Angeles, his birthplace, and Idaho. His photography has ranged from street photography to images of the built environment and other remains of civilization, particularly those discarded or abandoned elements that serve as evidence of human presence. He has spent most of his career photographing in Los Angeles and environs. "It is L.A.'s combination of beauty and brutality that has always intrigued Hernandez." La Biennale di Venezia said of Hernandez, "For the past three decades a prevalent question has troubled the photographer: how to picture the contemporary ruins of the city and the harsh impact of urban life on its less advantaged citizens?" His wife is the novelist Judith Freeman.
Texas Isaiah is a first-generation Black Indigenous American photographer and contemporary artist born in Brooklyn, New York. He is currently based in Los Angeles, California. His family is from Guyana, Venezuela, and Barbados. He is the 2019 recipient of the Getty Images: Where We Stand Creative Bursary grant. In 2017, Texas Isaiah was featured in TIME as one of the top 12 African American photographers you should follow right now. Texas Isaiah is currently a 2020–21 artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Stephanie, Cindy, Christy, Tatjana, Naomi, Hollywood is a black and white photograph taken in 1989 by photographer and director Herb Ritts. The subject of the photograph is a group of five women coyly entwined together in an embrace.
↑ Warhol, Andy (1997). The Warhol look: glamour style fashion / Mark Francis and Margery King; with essays by Hilton Als ... [et al.] Pittsburgh: Bulfinch Press. ISBN082122476X.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
