We, the Free is the final volume in represented artist Matt Eich’s four-part series The Invisible Yoke. The oeuvre was made over the course of 15 years, as the artist came of age, while the American superpower began a precipitous decline, and national tensions grew. This is Eich’s personal and observant visual chronicle of contemporary American society at a turning point in history. The earliest works in The Invisible Yoke began while Eich was yet perusing his bachelors. Foresight, vision, and determination has come to completion with the fourth volume of work. Critically acclaimed Carry Me Ohio, released in 2016, which chronicles small towns across southeast Ohio. Sin & Salvation in Baptist Town (2018) is an extended study of a formerly segregated community in Greenwood, MS. The Seven Cities (2020) surveys the economically diverse region of Virginia coastline, the artist’s own growing family, and a rising tide that threatens all. We, the Free (2024) opens up geographically, drawing from work made across the United States at this pivotal moment. The Invisible Yoke questions the role of collective memory in shaping contemporary American identity.
The America of these photographs is gone, replaced by something darker, more paranoid, more self-destructive. For many it has always been a difficult and unjust land. When I look at these images, I think about how quickly time passes, how soon we will all be gone from this earth. And life will go on, in all its beauty, all its terribleness. I think about how heavy it feels to move through this world, but how light my efforts are when made tangible in the form of photographs. They are light as air. Like smoke. Unable to change a damn thing. - Matt Eich
What's most remarkable about the photographer Matt Eich is his sincerity and his ongoing attention to the small, but in the end not insignificant moments of life. His photographs are forthright, direct, the creation of a curious wanderer. . . [T]he image of an expressionless man absentmindedly holding a handgun, and the closeup shooting of an alligator can be seen as alluding to our increasingly fractured and violent times. - Eugene Richards