Cal State Fullerton photographer captures human experience through his lens – Orange County Register

With nearly 50,000 people on campus and countless stories to tell, Matt Gush, assistant director of digital media & photographer at Cal State Fullerton, couldn’t ask for a more compelling job. .

Tasked with illustrating all of the university happenings, the Titan alumnus can be seen with his camera capturing everything from a blooming corpse at the Fullerton Arboretum to the Homecoming festival. and computer science students developing robotic prosthetics.

“One of the reasons I love my role is that every day I have to do something different,” says Gush.

But Gush and his photography skills capture more than just slices of college life. His passion for anthropology has led to one of his photographs being published in a recent issue of National Geographic, an achievement he is still struggling to achieve.

“It’s so weird when one day you’re chasing your dream, and then you get an email from National Geographic,” says Gush.

That dream started with Gush as a high school student. Country boy Whittier was passionate about drawing and painting with the intention of becoming an illustrator, but that all changed when his father brought home a digital camera. The instant gratification that came from taking a photo and being able to view it instantly got him hooked.

“I found the right vehicle, and from that day on, my life was forever changed because I couldn’t get enough of it,” Gush said. “I switched from painting to photography and never looked back.”

Gush arrived at CSUF with plans to complete some general education requirements before taking his art classes. It was there that he discovered anthropology and archaeology, fields of study that had sparked a previously untapped interest.

“I was never exposed to the study of people and civilizations as a practical field of academic study,” says Gush.

Before graduating from CSUF in 2012 with a BFA in fine art photography and a minor in anthropology, Gush completed an internship at the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office, photographing for Antonio Villaraigosa’s mayoral administrations. and Eric Garcetti.

Also during his university time, Gush was a student assistant at CSUF Strategic Communications. After graduating, he began working as a university photographer full-time, but he also spent the better part of a decade pursuing pre-Colombian Native Americans and capturing images of lost cities in his lens.

“I am fascinated with the civilizations scattered across the Americas, understanding how many amazing vestiges are still here and documenting it all in relation to one another,” Gush said. Gush said.

Several of his travels took Gush east of the Mississippi River into southern Illinois to the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, one of the first and largest pre-Colombian settlements.

While there, Gush established a relationship with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign archaeologist Caitlin Rankin, and her team as they worked on excavating the site. His documentation of Rankin’s progress on Mound 5 in 2018 led to the full-page publication of his photograph in the November/December 2021 issue of “National Geographic History”.

“It’s really exciting and amazing to see the inside of a literal pyramid being excavated,” Gush said.

Back home, a global pandemic has presented the challenge of telling stories about college life during campus closures. During that time, as the Black Lives Matter movement emerged, Gush was on the CSUF team that produced “The Temperature Rises,” a collaborative digital imaging and video project aimed at CSUF professionals to watch. review “racism, social justice, and police reform in the context of COVID-19. “It was an achievement that he felt was one of the bright spots to come out of after those difficult months.

“I think it’s a great thing to be on the front lines of the human experience,” says Gush, “especially across time and space.”

His fascination took Gush and his camera from the pyramids of Guatemala to the catacombs of Malta and many points in between. This summer, he plans to travel to Veracruz, Mexico, to document the excavation of one of the plantations of the Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Whether on Crete or on campus, photographing ancient Minoan tombs or contemporary social unrest, Gush found profound joy in observing all of the “irrational interactions of people continue to transform and transcend”.

And after 16 years of working on his craft, Gush is finally starting to look back and acknowledge what he has accomplished.

“Continually watching things change is one of the most rewarding things,” says Gush. “That I get to be the mediator of that reality, or perception of that experience, is one of the most incredible things on the planet for me.”