Peter Baker

Peter Baker

2016 Annual Juried Competition
Honorable Mention

Statement:

“The photographic image is not a representation; it is a fiction.” – Jean Baudrillard

The identities of our cities are being shaped by wealth, tourism, security and a kind of advertorial hyper-reality, deeming its citizens as mere spectators and consumers passing through, rather than those who make up its life-blood. Work In Progress deals with the interplay between urban dwellers and their artificial environs. The work scrutinizes the textural transformations of my current home, Los Angeles, and my native New York, subverting traditional modes of landscape and street photography in part by focusing on private property that poses as public space. As our cities morph into what Jean Baudrillard refers to as the simulacrum, questions of what is real and what is an illusion are called into question, as well as notions of progress and the socio-economics of the cityscape. As a photographer I view the world itself as a medium, one in which uncoordinated facts unfold erratically, often pressing against each other in strange and telling ways. I am using photography to apprehend and amplify aspects of reality that are fleeting, or that sit in plain view unhidden, but are rarely noticed.

Bio:
Born in 1981, Peter Baker is an artist/photographer from New York City. He received a BA in Literature & Photography from SUNY Purchase in 2005, and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2012, where he was awarded the Richard Benson Prize for Excellence in Photography. His work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver. He has designed and taught courses at the International Center of Photography, and has been a contributing writer for American Suburb X. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Artist’s website: www.peterbaker.org