Salton Sea C1 2007

Matthew Brandt made this photograph, "Salton Sea C1", sometime this century using the sort of processes that makes you think about what photography even is, or could be. The whole image has this sepia wash, and it feels more like memory than immediate experience. Look at how the textures in the water become these horizontal bands, almost like a Rothko painting, or Agnes Martin, all about subtle variation within a self-imposed limit. The dead tree in the center becomes a focal point and a kind of memento mori. Brandt is doing something interesting here, transforming the photographic image into something painterly, almost tactile. It reminds me a bit of some of the early photographic processes, like daguerreotypes, where the image had this silvery, almost ethereal quality. This is an image that invites contemplation, not just of the scene itself, but of the very nature of seeing and remembering.