For Jackson Patterson, the American West is more than a landscape. It is a place where family history, migration and memory have left their traces. Growing up in Arizona, Patterson developed an early appreciation for the vastness of the region and the ways people have lived with, depended on and transformed the land. Those ideas eventually became central to Recollected Memories, his ongoing series of photographic montages.

The project brings together photographs from Patterson’s own explorations with images from his family albums, allowing different generations to occupy the same frame. Old photographs appear within contemporary landscapes, connecting personal histories to the places in which they unfolded. What begins as an exploration of his own family gradually expands into something broader: stories of migration, perseverance, struggle and the enduring relationship between people and the land.

At the heart of Recollected Memories is Patterson’s belief that photography can make us look differently. In a culture saturated with images, he distinguishes between simply watching and genuinely looking. His own practice begins with that slower form of attention, allowing a place, a photograph or a memory to reveal connections that might otherwise remain invisible.

The result is photography that does not attempt to settle the past. Instead, Patterson lets old and new images speak to one another, leaving space for uncertainty, interpretation and emotion. Family stories continue to evolve, memories remain imperfect, and the landscapes themselves outlast generations. In Recollected Memories, that unfinished quality becomes the point: the past is not gone. It is still there, layered into the places we inhabit and the stories we choose to remember.