Matthew Niederhauser is a freelance photojournalist based in Beijing. He is open to and ready for any commercial, editorial or documentary work in Asia and also fancies himself an adept writer with an eye for the absurd. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Guardian Observer, Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine amongst others.

Matthew Niederhauser shoots both film and digital with a Canon 5D Mark II, Hasselblad 205FCC, panoramic Noblex 135U and a Linhof Technica V. He also travels with a Profoto 7b powerpack with two heads and a ring flash for environmental portraiture.

More importantly, Matthew Niederhauser is not always so finely attired as shown and finds writing about himself in the third-person rather disconcerting.

Please feel free to contact him at mdn@mdnphoto.com with any questions, concerns, possible collaborations or work inquiries.

Matthew is represented by the INSTITUTE for Artist Management

Awards/Honors:

2010 PDN Photo Annual Finalist - Personal Project Category - Tuanjiehu: An Urban Oasis

2010 UCCA "China Stories" Speaker - Ullens Center for Contemporary Art - Visions of Modernity

2009 Washington Fotoweek Speaker - Corcoran Gallery of Art - Visions of Modernity

2009 Px3 - Honorable Mention - Sound Kapital Portraits

2009 Noorderlicht - Official Selection - "The Pursuit of Happiness" Group Show

2009 PDN Summer Music Moment - Winner "Spontaneous Moment" Category - Screaming into the Void

Solo Shows:

2009 - powerHouse Arena - New York, New York - Sound Kapital: Beijing's Music Underground

2009 - Proud Galleries - London, England - Visions of Modernity

2009 - Govinda Gallery - Washington, DC - Sound Kapital: Beijing's Music Underground

Bio

Matthew Niederhauser’s involvement with Asia and photography first started in high school with four straight years of Chinese courses and late nights in the darkroom. Greatly inspired by his first language teacher’s own dramatic background during the Cultural Revolution in China, he became fascinated with the country’s expansive history and philosophical traditions and spent a year living with a host family in Beijing from 2000 to 2001. This immersion into Chinese society further deepened his interest in the country and it’s tumultuous history during the twentieth century.

After his first eleven months in Asia, Matthew began his studies at Columbia University where he immersed himself in the anthropology department and drew strongly from his first-hand experience with Chinese culture. It led to many more trips across Asia and, eventually, thesis research on urban development and the role of cultural tourism in integrating rural communities into central economic systems in western Tibet. During this period Matthew also began taking classes at the International Center of Photography in New York. After graduating from college in 2006, he split time between researching for the National Committee on US-China Relations and assistant teaching at the International Center of Photography before heading back to Beijing to begin his career as a fulltime documentarian and photojournalist.

Since then Matthew’s work covering youth culture and urban development in China has appeared in the New Yorker, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, Photo District News and the Guardian Observer amongst others. He also just published with powerHouse Books a 175-page, hardcover book entitled Sound Kapital that covers his portraits and concert photography of Beijing’s underground music scene. Otherwise, Matthew concentrates on a large-format, photo-documentary project entitled Visions of Modernity that investigates urban development and new architecture in Beijing. This is his main outlet for exploring the rapid changes in urban dwelling in China, and its effects on society and the environment.