Mathew Montieth is a Brooklyn-based photographer who graduated from the MFA program at Yale in 2004 .He has released a book of photographs from the Czech Republic entitled Czech Eden (2007), that was made over 11 months from September of 2001 to July of 2002, while Montieth was living in Prague on a Fulbright Fellowship.

In this interview with Shane Lavalette in his journal Montieth said that he had became captivated by how images take on meaning based on the sequence, order, and relationship to each other.

Though “Czech Eden” is named after an officially protected park in the Czech Republic, a place known for its vertiginous sandstone formations and remarkable natural beauty. However, few of Monteith’s photographs depict this preserve. Instead, most were taken in or around Prague, in his friends’ homes, on the streets, or in small towns where it is as likely to find a centuries-old castle as an ominous nuclear cooling tower looming large.

Montieth says:

The question of believability in photography intrigues me: of what is reality and what is created. Photography is subjected to the misconception that a photograph depicts what is, rather than what was seen. Much as a fiction writer describes a world that is recognizable and true, yet made up, the story is a fabrication based on a reality. I hope Czech Eden is understood in this manner. You might be able to find pieces of what I have described in the pictures of places and people, but the subjects would appear altogether different if you traveled to the Czech Republic. “Documentary” attempts to record an actuality. The photographs in the project, while made from the real world, are subjective and put in an order meant to create something independent, something that is not merely referential, or rooted in reality.