Eyeshot Books
The Western Edge
Photographer
Matthew Hayes
Edited by
Marco Savarese, Editor-in-Chief
Published
Eyeshot, 2025
Format
Hardcover, 22 × 24 cm
Pages
128
Price
Sold out
In “The Western Edge”, Matthew Hayes explores the shifting identity of the American West, a region suspended between myth and reality. His photographs capture the contrasts that define this vast territory: wilderness and settlement, beauty and erosion, history and transience. Awarded 3rd prize in the Series category of the Eyeshot Open Call 2024, this body of work traverses the high-desert plains and forested mountains of Idaho and Montana. Hayes reveals a landscape where fading signs and hollowed structures coexist with box stores and new builds, none of which escape the shadow of what once was. With a calm, observational eye, “The Western Edge” portrays a West that is neither nostalgic nor cynical, but richly complex, a frontier of contradictions still unfolding at the edge of the American imagination.
Who made it
The peoplePhotographer
Matthew Hayes
Matthew Hayes is a photographer based in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States. He earned his degree in photojournalism from the University of Montana in 2004 and has since focused on documenting rural life and culture in Idaho and Montana.
The book
Edition detailsEdition
FormatHardcover, 22 × 24 cm
Pages128
EditionLimited edition
SignedDigitally
Publishing
Edited byMarco Savarese
IntroductionLucrezia Bonarota
PublishedEyeshot, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Printed inItaly
ISBN979-12-80238-88-7
Made to last
MaterialsWe choose every material for what it gives the photographs, and for what it leaves behind. Every page, cover, and endpaper is paper made in Italy by Fedrigoni, founded in Verona in 1888: it gives us the print quality we want and the environmental guarantees we will not do without, and we pay more for both.
Papers
Interior and coverSymbol Tatami, matt coated. 30% more body than ordinary coated stock and 97% opacity: the blacks stay deep, and no image shows through from the page behind.
EndpapersSirio Color Black, 140 g/m². Dyed through the pulp with lightfast pigments, so it stays black for decades.
Standards
FSC® MixBoth papers: fibre from responsibly managed forests and controlled sources.
No elemental chlorineBoth papers: pulp bleached without elemental chlorine (ECF).
Acid freeBoth papers, Long Life certified: the pages will not yellow or turn brittle.
RecyclableBoth papers: every paper in the book can be recycled at the end of its life.
PapermakerFedrigoni, rated Platinum by EcoVadis (top 1% of its industry) and on the CDP A List for climate, 2025.
How we make it
DesignEdited, sequenced, and designed in our studio, page by page, together with the photographer.
PrintPaper, print, and binding in Italy, a short distance apart, with people we have worked with for years.
EditionWe print what is ordered, in a limited edition: no warehouse of unsold copies.
ShippingFrom Italy, one parcel per order, straight to its reader. An order never ships in pieces.
PackagingA recyclable mono-material envelope (Made for Recycling, Interzero), resealable to be used again, closed with acid-free paper stickers.
