Is an American photographer based in Texas who completed a Masters in Fine Art through the University of Hartford. It was during this time that he completed the project ‘Jasper’ which explores his and his subjects desire to run away or remove themselves from civilisation. In this project it was to the forests of the Ozark Mountains.
The project consists of a combination of portraits, landscapes and environmental images, these latter ones setting the scene and providing context to the portraits and the situation these men live in.
In an article with the British Journal of Photography first published in February 2019 Genitempo discusses the project and how he wanted to move into different areas of photography and how his fascination with the work of Frank Stanford effected his own photography. ‘I started to make these instinctual pictures that had an internal necessity to them,’ says Genitempo. ‘I didn’t really know what I was doing until I started noticing a pattern that began to emerge in those photographs.’
The project uses the poem by Ryan Paradiso which opens the printed book of these images. The text has no breaks but seems to echo the feeling of the images. Even though he used Paradiso in the book he quotes Stanford in his interview with BJP article. ‘I had this really obsessive fascination with the poet Frank Stanford,’ he says. ‘He made all his work in the Ozarks, interweaving his own experiences and his own trials with this dream state, and I was really attracted to the success of that. I began to understand that when I arrived in the area – it was difficult to not experience the Ozarks through that lens.’
Images from the BJP Article 2019
Bibliography
Accessed 25/09/2020
https://www.matthewgenitempo.com/jasper
Michele Usher 