Snapshots Local travel and lifestyle photographer Matt Dutile’s career takes
him all over the world: Africa, Asia, North America, South America,
Europe and a variety of islands. Clicking through his online portfolio
is like taking a tour of the globe, with colorful shots of exotic locales,
pictures of food you could almost taste and portraits that give you a
glimpse into far-away people’s lives.
But it wasn’t until recently that Dutile, who
has lived in Astoria for four years, realized that
while he’d captured the faces of people across
many time zones, he’d never focused on portraits
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of his own neighbors.
“I travel to all these really interesting
locales for different magazines, and while
there, I’m always looking to capture interesting
portraits,” he said. “I came back
and I was like, ‘This would be kind of cool
to do back here in Astoria because we
have diverse characters and such an interesting
set of people here.’
“You certainly can’t beat Queens for character,
personality and diversity,” he added.
He had previously displayed photos from
his travels in the Kinship Coffee Cooperative
shops on Steinway Street — plus, he’s “constantly
getting coffee at both of their locations”
— so he reached out to the owner and
proposed doing a portrait-based project there
called “Astorians.”
At each of the Kinship Coffee locations, Dutile
took over a corner of the shop for a day
and set up a solid backdrop.
He asked “literally anyone who walked in the
front door” if they’d like to be part of his photo
project. He’d ask them to think of a happy
moment, a sad moment or some sort of contemplation
to get a variety of looks, “because
I didn’t want it to be too grip-and-grin posey,”
he said. He took three or four photos of each
person, and the whole process took no more
than 30 seconds.
ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
By KATRINA MEDOFF
KATRINA@BOROMAG.COM
@KATRINAMEDOFF @KATYA_M22
Matt Dutile
