Welcome to no. 22 in our series Poignant Pics, where we've asked photo curators, educators, collectors, and makers to share a brief essay on a photo that has significantly changed the way they think or look at the world.

In this issue, our editor Diana Nicholette Jeon talks about Janet Matthews’ untitled image and how she felt when seeing it for the first time.

I Wished I had Made It…

I ‘met’ Janet Matthews some years back in an online class run by Laura Valenti. Due to the work she was doing then, I know of her love of trees and landscape. Recently she commented on one of my posts on IG, and I realized that I had not seen her work in a while. That realization led me to her IG account.

This image was one of the most recent she had uploaded there and it immediately caught my eye. Anyone who has seen my work knows I have spent more than a cursory amount of time working with multiple images mounted together. Yet, except for an occasional one-off, my work tends to keep the sides balanced and the images, though paired, separated. I sighed to myself, silently thinking, "I wish I made this image." It's is unbalanced; layered; with segments of different opacities and colors. The opacity of one of the images contributes to an almost torn appearance – as if it was of an overlay of Gampi paper. To me, this image speaks to the fragility of the environment and about how much we have done that is destructive to it. Yet, it is also laced with the hope of a brighter future and more human attention to counteracting climate change.

I don’t know Janet’s intent for this new direction. But I do know I hope she continues to develop it into a new series. One that I know will have me again thinking, "I wish I made that."

- Diana Nicholette Jeon

Janet Matthews is a Maryland-based artist who explores psychological themes through evocative still life and landscape images. She graduated from the University of Maryland, earning degrees in Studio Art and Art Education. Her background in drawing and painting has influenced her approach to photography, as she often incorporates hands-on methods into her work. She taught art in the Montgomery County Public Schools system for a number of years and has also taught classes at Photoworks in Glen Echo Park in Maryland.

Janet has exhibited her work nationally, in group and solo shows. Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications including Polymer Photogravure: A Step-by-Step Manual by Clay Harmon and Gum Printing: A Step-By-Step Manual by Christina Z. Anderson. She was awarded Individual Artist Award grants by the Maryland State Arts Council in 2012 and 2015, and her work is in the collections of the University of Maryland and the Montgomery County Arts and Humanities Council.

More of her work may be found on her website.

Diana Nicholette Jeon is a Honolulu, HI-based artist and an editor at One Twelve publications. She was awarded her MFA in Imaging and Digital Art from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County in 2006. Jeon's work has been extensively exhibited; venues include the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the Griffin Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hawaii State Art Museum, and the Museo de Lamego. Awards include the Lensculture 2020 BW awards, four Hawaii SFCA Purchase Awards, the International Photo Awards, the 11th Julia Margaret Cameron award, the Pollux Award, and the Mobile Photo Awards. Jeon’s art has been featured in a wide array of publications, including Artdocs, Gente di Fotografia, SHOTS Magazine, the Art Photo Index, and Lens Culture.