Artist Statement
Taking up the tradition of landscape photography to situate my musings, I probe photographic methods as well as the truth in color perception. My 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.
Utilizing an unorthodox set of tools to capture my chosen terrain—I travel to the far reaches of the world to find new sceneries—, I call into question the role of the camera as vicarious viewer relative to an image making process that involves other mechanical and non-mechanical agents. Colors belong to the eye; I convey this in my 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. Process Statement
My process and technique is a mix of everything. I use mirrors that distort, binoculars that shift perspective, sunglasses with colored lenses, really I’ll do anything until my camera see’s what my eyes are seeing. It depends on how I process, where my color balance begins. I use Capture1 and Photoshop the same way I use as camera, as a tool to obtain an image. A camera for me is a glorified paint brush, where if you know what you are doing with it, you can have it do whatever you want.

 

 

A Los Angeles native, Brendan Pattengale is a photographer with a painter’s eye for color and composition. A frequent traveler, he seeks out uniquely beautiful landscapes to suit his otherworldly aesthetic. His choice of perspective and color scheme creates photographs that appear, deceptively, more like drawings or watercolors. Pushing the viewer to reconsider the components of mechanical image making, he references the history of photography while keeping a very contemporary sensibility. 

Pattengale aims to reveal the Earth’s inner glow through his photographs, showcasing the towering rocks and crags of mountains in a way that pushes the viewer to reconsider their reality and what they are seeing. His belief that the Earth is a being that lives and breathes informs his practice. The examination of the landscape over time expands his understanding from a purely visual to a complete sensorial observation. 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. Utilizing an unorthodox set of tools to capture his chosen terrain—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.