Peter Bialobrzeski

Paradise Now #32

2008

51 x 63 inch type-c print, framed to 52 x 66 inches.
Edition 7. Signed, titled, dated and editioned on label verso.

In a persistent search for beauty and meaning in a rapidly changing world, Peter Bialobrzeski focuses his large format camera on landscapes in the midst of being recreated by development and globalization. At the same time, he celebrates their glorious color and glowing light. This contradiction produces images that suggest a festival atmosphere, despite their sense of isolation and dehumanization. The long exposures required by his many night-time images create ghost-like and other-worldly scenarios, rooted in reality by the presence of naked trees, people lingering in shadows, and other evidence of man’s inescapable presence. By not specifically identifying their exact locations, he emphasizes the universal nature of these conditions.

Peter Bialobrzeski was born in Wolfburg, Germany, in 1961. He studied photography at the Folkwangschule in Essen and the LCP in London. His work has been exhibited in Europe, the U.S., Asia, Africa and Australia. He has won numerous awards, including the prestigious World Press Photo Award, in 2003 and 2010, and most recently, the Erich Salomon Award from the German Society of Photographers in 2012. Since 2002, he has been a professor of photography at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany. Ten monographs of his work have been published.

His work has been critically acclaimed both nationally and internationally, and is represented in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Martin Margulies collection, and the Andrew and Christine Hall Collection.