11/06/2026
On Thursday, June 18 at 6.30 PM Matthew Connors will be at Micamera to launch 'The Axe Will Survive the Master' (MACK / SPBH, 2026). ✍️📖
On his own website, the author writes: Matthew Connors is an artist whose commitment to the medium of photography has been propelled by the revelatory potential of the public sphere. Rooted in specific currents of history, his bodies of work create a new visual encyclopedia of forms, portraits, symbols, and residues that emerge from protest movements, war, and oppressive systems of governance. His lyrical yet methodical approach resonates with political documentary and street photography, but continually challenges and transforms these categories.
The title of his new book doesn’t exactly inspire much hope: “The Axe Will Survive the Master” is a quote from “Secondhand Time” by the Belarusian-Ukrainian writer (and Nobel laureate) Svetlana Alexievich, published in 2013, the same year the images in Connors’s book begin.
The publisher writes:
“Bringing together photographs made between 2013 and 2025, this volume concludes a trilogy – following General Assembly (2013) and Fire in Cairo (2015) – meditating on power, resistance, and the fragile fate of democratic ideals. His images move between the geopolitical and the intimate, drawn as much from the fabric of daily life as from the front lines of history. They depict a world defined by conflict and uncertainty, yet charged with beauty, threat, and consequence.”
In 1904, in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollak, Kafka wrote: “A book must be an axe for the frozen sea within us.”
With this hope and an unshakable faith in the power of books, we look forward to seeing you on Thursday, June 18, at 6.30 PM at Micamera.
Admission is free. 🌆👥
Matthew Connors MACK Self Publish, Be Happy
