172 - Peter Fraser
© Peter Fraser
Born 1953 in Cardiff, Wales, Peter Fraser acquired his first camera at the age of 7 and after a false start studying Civil Engineering, at 18, began studying photography at Manchester Polytechnic the following year. In the summer of 1974 he lived in New York and worked at the Laurel Photography Bookstore at 32nd St and 6th Avenue which significantly expanded his sense of photography’s expressive possibilities. He graduated in 1976 after repeating his 3rd year due to major illness crossing the Sahara, while photographing in West Africa.
Peter lived in Holland and Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, before moving back to Manchester in 1981. He then began working with a Plaubel Makina camera in 1982 which led to an exhibition with William Eggleston at the Anolfini, Bristol in 1984, and a move to that city. In summer 1984 Peter travelled to Memphis, USA to spend nearly two months with Eggleston, which confirmed for him the desire to commit his life to working with colour photography.
He then worked on several series of photographs, leading to a first publication, Two Blue Buckets which won the Bill Brandt Prize in London (the precursor of the CitiBank International Photography Prize), in 1988.
He moved to London in 1990, subsequently publishing several new bodies of work, including Ice and Water 1993, Deep Blue 1997, Material 2002, and Peter Fraser (Nazraeli Press) 2006.
In 2002, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, staged a 20 year survey exhibition of Peter’s work, and he was shortlisted for the Citigroup International Photography Prize in 2004. In 2006 he was invited to be an Artist in Residence at Oxford University, England and produced new work for permanent installation in their new Biochemistry building in 2008.
In 2009 Peter was given a major commission by The Ffotogallery, Wales, to return to his country of birth, to make new work for a solo exhibition at the gallery, which opened in March 2010, with a new publication, Lost For Words.
In 2008 Fraser began working on A City In The Mind a new series of photographs in London, which was shown at Brancolini Grimaldi Gallery, London in May 2012 accompanied by a Steidl Publication.
From January to May 2013, Tate St Ives held a retrospective of Fraser’s career, the first Tate Retrospective for a living British Photographer working in colour, and Tate published a major monograph on the whole of Fraser’s career with a text by David Chandler. Tate purchased 10 works for their permanent collection from the Two Blue Buckets series in 2014.
In 2014 Peter was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society, UK.
In spring 2017 Peperoni Books, Berlin, published a new ‘Director’s Cut’ of Fraser’s 1988 publication Two Blue Buckets with 19 missing images from the original, and a new essay by Gerry Badger and a discussion between Fraser and David Campany.
In 2017 Peter’s exhibition Mathematics was exhibited at the Real Jardin de Botanico, Madrid, part of PhotoEspana 17 and Skinnerboox, Italy, published Mathematics with 52 colour plates, and essays by Mark Durden, David Campany and an afterword by Peter. The first UK exhibition of Mathematics opened at Camden Arts Centre, London on the 5th July, and ran to 16th September 2018. The accompanying File Note no 120 published by the gallery, featured a specially commissioned essay The Things That Count by Amy Sherlock, Deputy Editor of Frieze.
In March 2021 Peter received a Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, to support the production of new work in the UK and across Europe in the time of Covid-19 ‘paying subtle attention to atmosphere and nuance, quietly reflecting on manifestations of our responses to the enormous changes taking place across the human landscape’.
On episode 172, Peter discusses, among other things:
Responses to Covid and his approach.
Poetic truth vs. documentary truth.
How he came to live in Hebden Bridge, Manchester.
Seeing in colour, having made a B&W darkroom.
His epiphany in the sahara desert.
The influence of the film, Powers of Ten, which he saw at 15.
His love of mathematics and how he came to explore it photographically.
His Two Blue Buckets image and why it’s significant.
Staying with William Eggleston in the 80s and what he took away from it.
His ‘lost decade’, broke in London, printing for Martin Parr and other photographers.
Referenced:
Albert Street Workshop - Ray Elliott and Jenny Beavan
William Scott
David Chandler
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