Born and raised in Arizona, photographer Jackson Patterson has always been fascinated with the beauty of the desert and the general lifestyle of people in the American West. Recollected Memories is a series of photomontage images that were inspired by this passion for that landscape visually blended together with his larger family history.
Using digital techniques, Patterson very deliberately blends his own photographs with images found in old family albums. The associations that he produces between people and the space around them sparks all kinds of fascinating narratives where the lines between reality and fiction cannot be distinguished. Most of the images are black and white, which creates feelings of nostalgia for the past but also uncertainty about when the photos were taken.
Patterson says, “Each blended piece possesses its own original story while the viewer takes away another version that is his or her own. They are stories of perseverance, pride, struggle, life and death. They are human stories intertwined in a majestic landscape.”