Peter Metelerkamp

Photographs on the Gloucester Road

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily...

These images are gestures of affection for a couple of blocks of a familiar urban artery, reflecting the abundance of visual moments available to all.

The prints are also love-letters to photography itself.

They are snapshots made with a camera over 50 years old, printed by hand in a traditional darkroom on silver-gelatin fibre-based paper. They actively embrace and play with the action of light (the fundamental subject of all photographs) and the optical, mechanical and chemical "limitations" of the medium. The shutter and lens are indiscriminate in how they frame and order space and the passing moment, while monochrome film signally "fails" to represent "reality": every photograph is an arbitrary reflection on a world of shadows.

Uncertainty, inversion, reversal, emergence: if one actively embraces these qualities, one may arrive at the curious conjunctions and lucky arrangements so beloved by the surrealists, and the utterly ordinary may reveal unexpected charms....

You can contact Peter Metelerkamp on peter@petermet.com. For more information, go to the website of Peter Metelerkamp on www.metelerkamp.com.