Dazed Digital: In your latest collection of photographs, Lakes and Resevoirs, you've chosen to manipulate the images. Can you explain the process of how and why did this?
Matthew Brandt: The procedure in making the Lakes and Reservoirs is fairly simple. I visit a lake and/or reservoir. I photograph it and collect water from it, then make a C-print of this photograph and soak it in the water that was collected. The outcome is the reaction of the image of this lake or reservoir that has been soaked in its own water over a period of time. They are circumstances of a Lakes’ image that meets its real substance.
Before this I was making portraits of people, salted paper prints with their own bodily fluids to chemically produce their own image. For example, a picture of my friend Will was printed with his tears as the salt content to produce his image. So I was already in this territory of representation and how the image reacts with the real. I have always liked to think about photography in relation to mirrors, which is a very standardized almost cliché notion of photography.