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(1984, USA)
Taking up the tradition of landscape photography to situate his musings, Pattengale probes photographic methods as well as the truth in color perception. His photographs are strikingly abstract, psychedelic in the way that they vividly depict valleys and vistas, yet they maintain a certain realism in the subject matter. Pattengale travels to the far reaches of the world to find new sceneries—he calls into question the role of the camera as vicarious viewer relative to an image making process that involves other mechanical and non-mechanical agents. As was said by Goethe in his Theory of Colors, colors belong to the eye; Pattengale conveys this in his images, which are entirely true in their retelling of light and, therefore, vision, while they are also altered in their process prior to the instant of the photograph.
Visual artists such as Los Angeles-based Brendan Pattengale (b. 1984) showcase a desire to work outside of landscape traditions while continuing to utilise an unorthodox set of tools to capture the overly familiar panoramas of mountainous landscapes, as once captured by both Pictorialists and Realists alike. Considering the camera as a glorified paint brush, Pattengale’s body of work ‘Color of Love’ revives historic photographic processes as well as the use of innovative techniques and unconventional equipment and chemistry. He has manipulated materials and processes for expressive purposes, blurring the distinction between observed and constructed imagery.