Calling his approach “a little bit messy and experimental,” Matthew Brandt produces large-scale photographs through labor-intensive processes recalling the 19th-century origins of photography, often incorporating the physical matter of the subject itself. Attuned to the history of his medium—and its resolute physicality—and inspired by classical American landscape photographs, Brandt traverses the West, photographing and collecting material samples from nature and cities. Like early inventors Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, Brandt revels in the alchemy of image making, experimenting with the effects of various materials on the development process. He has produced rainbow-washed pictures of lakes by soaking them in their own water, and photographs of swarms of sparkling honeybees incorporating the bodies of the bees themselves. Through his work, Brandt poses a fundamental question about his magical-seeming medium: what is a photograph?

Brandt has been the subject of recent institutional solo shows at the Columbus Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah. Recent group exhibitions include the International Center of Photography, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Aspen Art Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Brandt was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Pictet award and had his work showcased in an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2015. Notable press includes reviews and profiles in ARTFORUM, Art in America, The New Yorker and Modern Painters.