Featured Artist Peter C. Brandt

Specializing in architectural art, Peter C. Brandt takes his images to another level. Enjoy his portfolio, and be sure to visit his website for more.

 

 

One day I wondered what if I considered and dared to paint some part of my architectural photographs? Digitally painted by mouse! What was the message of the idea?

 

 

By a distortion of the reality, our eyes need to stop, to have a thorough look. Will we notice what is there, without any unusual color painted on it? Does this not force us to examine what is there? Did we ever notice the texture of the buildings–the graphics, the design, the curves of curvilinear architecture? An unusual detail draws our attention and makes everything look different. My painted architecture hi-lights this idea.

 

 

I shoot all digital now with a handheld camera; this allows me to move into the angle I feel is right for me. I use a Nikon D700 as well a Fujifilm HS-50. A shooting on a building may involve up to twenty to thirty images or sometimes as little as three or four.

 

 

Selecting my final image is difficult yet automatic. I work with instinct but still I try to be open to other possibilities, maybe there’s something in another shot that I didn’t notice.

 

 

The next step is to simplify and clean up the image. Is there a spark to high-light this one with color or leave as a simple graphic? When I do paint, I make myself relax, to stare and stop thinking, and allow myself to select a color and paint by instinct–no analysis!

 

 

When I have a selected image, I print an 8.5 x 11,” then fine tune it and print an 13 x 19.” Later, if it is included in an exhibition, I’ll print a 24” x 36” or a 40” x 60” in limited editions of 10 in any size on archival ultra matte paper.

 

 

My wish is two-fold. First, is that I would like to see my work which is photography digitally enhanced as art. Photography has always been an evolution from one medium to another; after all, the imagination is the origin of ideas and the printed image is the sharing of an artist’s ideas and feelings.

 

 

Secondly, one day I would love to paint a real building. By this, I mean to apply plastic layers of color over the windows of a real building. These plastic layers would be perforated so tenants could see out, through the plastic layers.

 

 

Look at my image of 9 West 57 Street. This is my spirit flying up into the sky!

 

 

I started off at age nineteen in a photography studio with architectural accounts, and was assigned to photograph the construction of Montreal’s World Exhibition: “Man and His World, Expo’67” back in 1967. After shooting the ‘building of’ Expo, I got into shooting sectionals, abstracts of architecture, reductive images.

 

 

Even though I’ve passed thru many types and styles of photography shoots over the last 50 years, one thing remained constant…..shooting abstracts of architecture. Recently I recognized one of my characteristics; the ability of ‘pattern recognition’. It’s been part of me, and leads me to the need to record these patterns over and over. Naturally, the world’s architects leave me with endless patterns to recognize and capture.

 

Peter Brandt invites you to Like his Facebook page.

 

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