My generation might be the last to have believed in any form of photographic truth. People are now surprised if they find out an image hasn't been altered in some way. I feel that my work is exploring this predisposition while aspiring for a better, stranger kind of fiction, one that may contain elements of distortion and exaggeration but is anchored by chance. I am using the language of "staged color narrative photography" to subvert from within this tradition by letting life back into the images and favoring the photographic over the painterly.
These photographs are attempts to deconstruct the failure of ideas. I'm interested in what I can learn by allowing a 'staged' photograph to break down and, I hope, then spiral into the spontaneous. Ideally a post-performance energy is released into the image to amplify a range of potential meanings and reveal more than I would have been able to imagine myself. This tension between spontaneity and theatricality lends itself to a different type of discovery, one that cannot be achieved by the idea alone.
Bradley Peters was born in Columbus, Nebraska, in 1979. He received a BA from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln in 2004, with degrees in both Psychology and Art. He is a 2008 graduate of the MFA program in Photography at the Yale University School of Art.
2010 Graphic Intersections, Umbrage Gallery, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Nomination for reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow
2008 Richard Benson Prize
2004 Jean R. Faulkner Memorial Award
2003 Undergraduate Creative Activities & Research Experiences Grant
2003 Midwest Society For Photographic Education Gold Award
2002 Undergraduate Creative Activities & Research Experiences Grant