Matthew Finley: Lost and Found – Reception RSVP
- Saturday
October 4, 2025
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
LACP is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition by Matthew Finley, whose work imagines the world as it should have been: A world where no queer person feels ashamed for who they love, who they are and how they want to present themselves.
FREE with RSVP
© Photo by Matthew Finley
About
LACP is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition by Matthew Finley, whose work imagines the world as it should have been: A world where no queer person feels ashamed for who they love, who they are and how they want to present themselves.
In this moment, when people in power insist on marginalizing, isolating and denouncing queer communities, LACP insists on elevating love and acceptance.
Curator
Dr. Rotem Rozental, Los Angeles Center of Photography Executive Director and Chief Curator
Opening Reception and Book Signing
Saturday, October 4th, 4pm-6pm @ LACP Headquarters, 252 S. Los Angeles St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Special walk-through with the artist at 4:30pm!
About
Matthew Finley’s work imagines the world as it should have been: A world where no queer person feels ashamed for who they love, who they are and how they want to present themselves. In this universe, family support of one’s love is a given, rather than a possibility, or, we could say, an impossibility.
In his poetic photographic projects, Finley provides coordinates for how life in this world would be. This solo exhibition, which depicts several series from the past decade, chronicles how Finley reimagines found images and objects, encouraging his staged subjects to discover the joy of nature, as well as a self-consciousness that never seeks to conceal or mask itself, visualizing how we package ourselves for others and the emotional states that result. Whether in fictive family albums or expansive analog projects, his photographic perspective remains intimate and vulnerable. Finley positions male bodies in compositions that echo photographic histories, in which the male subjects become a focal point of the viewing eye, a source of fascination and desire–and that desire quietly comes to the fore to insist on its rightful place. The emotional burden at the core of these works informs their shapes, perspectives, light and configurations. They are both haunting and haunted, charting a path from rejection to liberation by way of friendship and love.
Desire, in these works, becomes a core element of vision; whether it is the desire to be close to another body or the desire to be fully accepted. In that sense, Finley’s work negotiates lived experiences and offers them as an invitation for the viewer, to become an active participant; re-imagine relationships and their histories alongside those captured in the frame, and insist on joy and love as an antidote for judgment, exclusion and isolation in our current world.
Back to Show page HERE.
Tickets
Admission is FREE. Please RSVP below. Suggested Donation HERE
Details
- Date: Saturday, October 4th, 4pm-6pm PST
- Free and Open to the Public
- Location: Downtown Los Angeles (LACP Headquarters), 252 S. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.
- Parking: Street parking, Public parking: Terasaki Budokan Recreation Center (paid, underground, just across the street from LACP) and Joe’s Auto Parks Parking, 330 Main St, Los Angeles, CA 90013 (paid, surface).
If you have additional questions please email info@lacphoto.org.