Peter Ydeen
Posted on August 22 2017
The subjects Ydeen chooses unveil his preference for desolated corners, isolated details, but also for neon lights and shop signs… And all together, they compose a delicate (and deserted) urban symphony, far from all the potential scary and eerie implications..
.
Urban Landscape photographer, Peter Ydeen lives in Pennsylvania and works in New York City. At the beginning of his creative career, he was intended to be a landscape painter and a sculptor – as his studies say –, but then, more recently, he has been captivated by photography. Since then, he started to capture urban scenes during the night in a lyric and poetic way, also thanks to the inspiration taken from George Tice’s pictures.
.
The subjects Ydeen chooses unveil his preference for desolated corners, isolated details, but also for neon lights and shop signs… And all together, they compose a delicate (and deserted) urban symphony, far from all the potential scary and eerie implications.
The series he realises, from Easton Nights to Valley Days, are a black and white or colourful hymn of the contemporary city, which also demonstrates his undeniable ability to ‘see’ things and their mutual relationships.
.
Author Silvia Colombo
.
.
L.A.: Hello Peter. To start, how and when did you become interested in photography? and who were the first artists that you found inspiring?
.
Peter Ydeen: I have been involved with art my whole adult life, but only became dedicated to photography in the last three years. I was on the fringe of commercial photography because of various jobs, but my training was as a painter and sculptor, with an early emphasis on landscape painting. I bought my first SLR, a Petri 35mm Rangefinder when I was 15, and even then mostly did landscape photography. My biggest influences are the early 20th century American painters such as Arthur Dove, John Marin, Charles Sheeler, and Charles Burchfield. As I began to immerse myself in photography, I began to look at the work of George Tice. My contemporaries, whose work I look at daily, such as photographer Emmanuel Monzon, have been the biggest influence from a photography standpoint. Still early Modern painting is still by largest influence. Also, lying underneath all of my art is an interest in Romantic literature of the 19th century, such as E..T.A. Hoffman,, and that aspect of taking the audience inside the work, which is always on my mind.
.
L.A.: Can you tell us a little about your personal project "Easton Nights"? What led to this project?
.
Peter Ydeen: Easton Nights began as an exercise in making a night photo for a show in California. I had George Tice in mind, as he actually lives and photographs in my same area, and I empathize with the poetic aspect of his work. I was soon became enchanted by the visual richness and timelessness the night helped to reveal. It is almost the opposite of Street Photography, which lives in the moment, and instead presented perpetuity. The night, with its specific lighting, minimalizes and isolates vignettes. These are like individual stages, all with the character of their many makers, but with a quiet energy, much like a Rothko painting. It emanates. There was no plan for a series, and so my knowledge of a concept followed the photos themselves. The photos telling me far more than I tell them. I find a lyricism and animism and even a chimerical humor, which shows itself in constant surprises. Probably the most important realization was that these “night photos” were not really about the night. Instead, the night, with all of it’s unique color wheels, man-made lights and specific illumination, was in reality just a tool. The night helps to direct our vision to the environments we create. These photographs without people, are all about people. They are a reflection of the world we create for ourselves.
.
.
It's A Nice Night for a Picnic │Buy it
.
.
L.A.: How does this project relate to other work or project you have done?
.
Peter Ydeen: Training as a landscape painter, you are constantly learning to see: see relationships between shapes, interactions between colors, natural rythyms, cadence, and patterns. All of my work comes from my eye trained as a landscape painter. Even the series I have done with people in the photos, find their way into arrangements and structures, which then place people as just another element in the environment. The difference with the night photography comes mostly from how color and light have a unique set or rules. The night photography also holds the greatest degree of surprise, and possibly the energy from the landscape is a bit more pronounced.
.
.
.
L.A.: What do you hope people see, feel or understand when they look at your images?
.
Peter Ydeen: Every artist is defined by his viewers; no matter what his or her intentions may be. What I hope people see, is that in the classic tenet of Urban Landscape photography, seeing “beauty in the mundane”, is that nothing is mundane unless you choose it to be. I hope they can feel the energy, see the relationships and structures, and have an appreciation for what they have created. What I don’t want, is for people to see the night for the frightening macabre reputation we assign it.
.
.
A-Treat and a Bus Stop │Buy it
.
.
L.A.: What kind of relationship you have with the contexts you are shooting? What's your degree of involvement with these?
.
Peter Ydeen: There is a sort of symbiosis occurring as you sit in silence. Everything seems to fit into its place with a quiet energy. The distractions are all gone, and everything is perfect. It is an elegant quiet of which I am just one part.
.
L.A.: What are you busy doing in this period? Have you any future project?
.
Peter Ydeen: I am still involved with Easton Nights, and am now working hard on bringing the images to print. The dark half of the palette is very difficult to change from mixing lights on a backlit monitor, to mixing inks on paper. Different color wheels, out of gamut colors, all provide a challenge much harder than daytime photography. I have also been designing and building my own frames, with the thought of showing a large selection of the series; especially here in Pennsylvania. Lastly, along with the printing there will eventually be a book, or possibly two, showing the hundreds of photos from the Easton Nights series together. The photos feed off each other and I want to place them together in a volume. My wife and I travel, and I would like to continue to do series of Urban Landscape photos from the places we go, such as the small series “Waiting for Palms” just completed from Egypt and Morocco.
.
.
.
.
v>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.
BUY IT NOW View Peter Ydeen on Gallery
.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.
Peter Ydeen: http://peterydeen.com
.
PeterYdeen
.
.
.
.
.
Connect