Hello PurePhoto Fans!

Piro Patton has been shooting for more than 2 decades. His work has taken him all over the United States and Europe shooting everything from street scenes to commercial work. He began taking photographs in 1990 at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was earning a degree in jazz performance playing the acoustic bass. Patton found himself increasingly in demand for photographic work. 
So, in 2002 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and set up a photographic studio, Piro Patton Pictures. Within a few months he was exhibiting at well-known galleries and has been a curator at the Bolinas Museum’s photography gallery since 2004. Patton regularly exhibits his work through out the bay Area and is held in private collections around the U.S. 



To the casual observer he might seem to be wondering aimlessly through the city capturing moments at random but when you understand him and his art it is a vastly different story. His street work is bordering on genius, as is the method to his madness. Piro is an accomplished Acoustic Bass player and his work reflects the subtle nuances the way the notes of his bass might sound if they were pictures. His long history of Jazz mimicked in his artwork sets a fast paced shooting style but still displaying great thoughtfulness. What Piro seems to do, especially with Hole, is contrast subjects that may seem ordinary in their own right – like trees and a portal – but when put together make an amazing, thought-provoking image. One could say the same about music, especially Jazz. It’s the act of putting the notes together that makes beautiful music, not the playing of individual notes. His work is a wonderful piece to have in your collection, not just for it’s technical elegance but for the true meaning behind it. The dichotomy between man and nature is evident in most of his work. While thought provoking, it is very subtle. That’s what makes great art; the ability to deliver a message without having to beat you over the head with it.

Behind The Image: Hole (Piro In His Own Words)
Piro describes “Hole as a great metaphor; that both nature and beast can be beautiful. Taking that picture was conscious; if you look at it the other way it doesn’t work. The other way the metaphor is different. Imagine a lonely tree on a highway with trash around it. It is man’s abuse of nature. I’m an optimist and just don’t see things that way. Like music I see everything working together to from a symphony. By themselves the parts of Hole might not make a great photo but the combination of the two is a beautiful marriage. My aim is for you to understand the photograph without talking or thinking too much about it. You get the metaphor even if you are just casually looking.”

He shoots exclusively with a Hassleblad 903swc, an architecture camera with no mirror. It is the perfect tool for this kind of patient work. The lack of mirror means that his camera never “goes dark.” He can wait for all the elements to come into play before he snaps the shutter. It is instantaneously preserved as intended.

Much of Piro’s selected work from the past few years is available in PurePhoto Collections and you can pick up some of his pieces at great prices in our Members Gallery His work is offered in all 3 of our Collections and should be a staple for any new collector.

Additional work by Piro Patton:

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