This striking image was made by American artist John Pfahl for his 1970s series Altered Landscapes. As the name suggests, these pictures witnessed Pfahl enact physical changes to the natural environment he was preparing to capture, whether creating graphic shapes with string, or rearranging natural objects, like snowballs or oranges, into improbably perfect patterns. “These gestures sometimes repeat strong formal components; fill in information suggested by the scene, or act upon information external to the photograph itself,” explains Joseph Bellows Gallery, the idea being that the scenes are “at once interrupted and completed” by the interventions.
