Matt Mahurin

Matthew S. Mahurin (born January 31, 1959) is an American illustrator, photographer and film director. Mahurin's illustrations appear in ''Time'', ''Newsweek'', ''Mother Jones'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''Esquire'', ''Forbes'', and ''The New York Times''.

Mahurin's work as a photo essayist has dealt with subjects such as homelessness, people with AIDS, the Texas prison system, abortion clinics, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Belfast. His extensive work directing music videos since 1986 have resulted in working with U2, Queensrÿche, Metallica, Dreams So Real, Tracy Chapman, Tom Waits, R.E.M., Alice In Chains, Def Leppard and many other popular music performers.

Photographs by Mahurin, including ''Clemmons Prison, Texas'' (1985), ''Texas Prison'' (1988), ''Woman's Face in Darkness'' (1989) and ''Paris'' (1984), are included in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mahurin has a reputation for photographing himself and manipulating his own likeness in his commercial photo-illustration work. Examples of his own image appearing on magazine covers are the November 29, 1993 cover of ''Time'', with Mahurin as Sigmund Freud, the March 14, 1994 cover of ''Time'', with himself as a caveman and the May 17, 2004 ''Time'' cover where Mahurin posed and photographed himself as an Abu Ghraib prisoner.

Mahurin is also credited with a notorious ''Time'' cover of O. J. Simpson, featuring an altered mugshot which removed the photograph's color saturation (inadvertently making Simpson's skin darker), burned the corners, and reduced the size of the prisoner ID number. This appeared on newsstands next to an unaltered copy on the cover of ''Newsweek'', which occasioned some controversy over photo manipulation. Provided by Wikipedia