Looking at portfolios from Critical Mass 2011…

A number of photographers are looking at old family photographs and finding new ways to revisit history. Jackson Patterson has a particularly intriguing approach to the retelling of his familial legacy of westward migration. As my own relatives migrated across the west, these images of family and landscape feel familiar, revealing a poignancy and sense of historical memory that are perfect compliments to each other.

Born and raised in Arizona, Jackson developed an appreciation for both the beauty and austerity of the desert and the lush diversity of nature. His artistic and personal curiosities have led him throughout the U.S., Mexico, South America and Europe, but always returning to the American West where he finds the expansive and diverse scenery to be home. Jackson received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has been exhibiting work in Pennsylvania, Oregon, California and Arizona , in particular, at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, the Pendleton Art Center, The Center for Fine Art Photography, The Togonon Gallery. His work is included in the Paul Sack Collection at the SFMOMA. He is an instructor at the Art Academy University, the San Francisco Photo Center and the San Francisco Art Institute ACE program.

In the latest series, Recollected Memories, I was inspired by the tales of my families westward migration and am merging the landscapes of the American West with my family albums, attempting to collocate the medium of photography, 21st century digital practices, with the personal. The results that come into focus are new fantastical stories. 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.