f r a n k  p e e t e r s    p h o t o g r a p h y

 

 

---   Curators reflecting on the work of Frank Peeters
--- Sue Davies, OBE           Curator & Founder, The Photographers’ Gallery, London
               
                Sue Davies photographed by Richard Keith Wolff ©
                With kind permisssion of the author.

Frank Peeters is, to use an old fashioned term, a photographic artist. Not to be confused with an "artist" (I.e. painter or sculptor) working with photography. He is a pure and straight photographer, using the specific qualities of the medium; light, texture, space and ambiguity to convey ideas and moods rather than simply to document or record his subjects. His is a classic perception and his theme seems primarily the basic one of exploring the living and the dead through his medium to the best of his, and its ability. He has not entered into the current debates surrounding the deconstruction of myths but is exploring them in his own personal way.

While clearly these pictures are directed in so far as people and places are brought together, Peeters' method of working is not a static one. His seemingly tight compositions are the result of working, usually very closely, round his subject until he sees exactly what satisfies him. He may pre-visualise to some extent but his mind is open to receive and recognise the Image that will create the feeling and atmosphere for which he Is searching. Working In black and white and with a small format camera, Peeters sets out to make us reconsider, through the use of juxtapositions, the real and Imaginary relationships between the living and the dead, the moving and the static. The ambiguity arrives because on occasion the still, manufactured part of the content seems more alive than the living component, be h human or vegetable. These Juxtapositions have been called symbolic and surreal but although they may relate to the strong history of surrealism within Belgian art the subjects are not quirky or outrageous but rather serious.

Tensions are created within the frame but we are not left dissatisfied. Each picture Is complete In Itself, though the work Is created In a number of series, and when a group Is shown together the message achieves considerably more clarity. In printing, the full range of available tones is used, without losing detail and Peeters' response to fabrics and textures Is finely tuned and used with discretion and force.

The early series in which he worked with a shaven headed model, Juxtaposed with various figurative sculptures In a pale stone, is seemingly simple but achieves a tension by the careful placing of the living and dead components and the use of strong shadows. In later work where he Is contrasting living plants with those printed on different materials, the tension exists not only between these components but Is completed by his fine attention to texture.

The work of Frank Peeters deserves serious consideration because he has. a consistent vision within himself and has approached the abiding concerns of arusts in an individual manner which eschews the obvious and thus raises questions in the mind of the viewer which Involve him in the search.

Sue Davies, November 1987

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© Frank Peeters - All Rights Reserved -2009

Frank Peeters Photography
Frank Peeters
Photography

Frank Peeters Photography
Frank Peeters
Photography

Frank Peeters Photography
Frank Peeters
Photography

Frank Peeters Photography
Frank Peeters
Photography

Frank Peeters Photography
Frank Peeters
Photography









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