
Hills Creek Lake, OR 7 from Lakes and Reservoirs
Matthew Brandt's *Hills Creek Lake, OR 7* from his *Lakes and Reservoirs* series is a chromogenic print that has been soaked in the very water of Hills Creek Lake in Oregon, allowing the lake itself to physically alter and shape its own image. The process causes the water to chemically react with the photographic print, producing unpredictable blooms, streaks, and distortions that blur the boundary between representation and material reality. The result is a hauntingly beautiful abstraction that collapses the distinction between a photograph of a place and an artifact of that place.
- Medium
- Chromogenic print, soaked in Hills Creek Lake water.
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Photographs
October 1, 2014
More by Matthew Brandt
Artists in conversation
Binh Danh
American · b. 1977
Binh Danh uses chlorophyll printing to embed photographic images directly into plant leaves, similarly incorporating natural materials into the photographic process so that nature physically becomes part of the image itself. Like Brandt, his work dissolves the boundary between landscape subject and material substance, creating haunting and organically altered photographs.

Chris McCaw
American · b. 1971

Chris McCaw uses extended solar exposures that literally burn and scorch his photographic paper, allowing natural forces and site specific conditions to physically transform the photographic surface in unpredictable ways. His experimental process based landscape photography shares Brandt's commitment to letting environmental phenomena materially alter and abstract the image.

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Japanese · b. 1948

Hiroshi Sugimoto's long exposure seascape photographs reduce landscape to meditative, muted abstractions that blur representation and material surface, echoing the haunting visual quality of Brandt's water altered prints. Both artists use photographic processes to push landscape imagery toward conceptual and atmospheric abstraction rooted in natural phenomena.
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