Peter Black page on new site   New book by Peter Black - "I loved you the moment I saw you" "In eighty-two brilliant, disturbing, and compassionate photographs, extended as if across the time it takes for a baby to wake up and recognise the grandfather who is waiting with the child to cross a busy, dangerous street, Peter Black has composed one of the great photo-portraits of our time. A digital flâneur on high alert crisscrossing the complex urban landscape, Black has seen and loved the tender, sad, and often humorous details of life lived moment by moment on the streets of his home city." - Ian Wedde. Since 2005, Wellington photographer Peter Black has been working exclusively in colour, and printing his own archival pigment prints at around A2-size. These photos portray life and the human condition, using the streets of Wellington, New Zealand as a stage. The photos are not posed, directed or manipulated in any way. The sequencing of images in the book is almost cinematic, working back to Black's early influences; notably Robert Frank's seminal publication 'The Americans'. Digital photography and contemporary use of colour plant Peter Black firmly in the 21st century, though, and this landmark publication restates his position as New Zealand's leading exponent of street photography. NZ Listener review by Anthony Byrt      Landfall review by Georgina McWhirter NZ Herald review by Peter Simpson   Wellingtonian review by Greg Whitburn The book is available from Unity Books, Willis St, Wellington, other fine booksellers, also at Photospace Gallery. Hardcover, 82 plates, with an essay by Ian Wedde. RRP $60.00 - ISBN 9780864736598 Order online from Victoria University Press   Book design: spencerlevine.co.nz Peter Black - artist's bio For over 30 years Peter Black's photographs have been recognised in significant public exhibitions and publications. Selected career highlights include: being the first New Zealand photographer to have a solo show at the National Art Gallery - Fifty Photographs, 1980 the opening show of the McNamara Gallery, Wanganui - Moving Pictures, 2002 a survey show devoted to his work, City Gallery, Wellington - Real Fiction, 2003. The accompanying catalogue featured leading art and literary writers responding to his work being featured in the major publications - Contemporary New Zealand Photographers, Mountain View Publishing, 2005, and Into the Light, Craig Potton, 2006 a joint exhibition with a Robert Mapplethorpe portfolio at Te Papa - Flowers and Foliage, 2007 His work is in most major public collections in New Zealand, and many significant private collections. Peter's photographs include iconic and innovative series such as Moving Pictures which catches the essence of 'Rogernomics' New Zealand in images taken from a car. Autoportraits 1986 and the 2007 Public series are powerful intimate portraits of strangers in the street. The boundaries between photography, text and cinema are other key concerns in Peter's body of work. For thirty years Peter developed his own black and white film and made his own silver gelatin prints. A limited number of vintage prints from key bodies of work are still available. Peter now works in colour with series such as Outskirts which explores the landscape of manufacturing and industry. New Colour is an ongoing series which addresses New Zealand's prospects in the city, country and at the sea shore. Peter has printed these works himself on archival photo rag paper using Epson K3 Ultrachrome inks. Limited edition artist's albums of both these series are also available. 'Peter's photographs insist on a close proximity between 'fictional' and 'real'. He is concerned with the capability of real life to yield metaphors, to expand and contract, to grow. Pictorial analogies abound in the work: while Peter's photographs are images of the real world, they are also a compendium of selected fictions. Together they make a plotless narrative which stretches over nearly 30 years.'- Greg O'Brien, City Gallery, Real Fiction (Sport 30), 2003, Fergus Barrowman. Full Greg O'Brien text available at: New Zealand Electronic Text Centre - Sport #30 www.peterblackphotos.com - Peter Black's personal website Contact: Street and postal address: Photospace gallery 1st floor, 37 Courtenay Place Wellington 6011 New Zealand ph/fax: 64-4-382 9502 Mobile: 027 444 3899 Director: James Gilberd j.gilberd at xtra.co.nz All material ©Peter Black and Photospace Gallery