Peter Fraser: Mathematics

About

With an almost obsessive focus on the ‘stuff’ of the world, Fraser is concerned with the matter that comprises our everyday. Rather than constructing his photographs, Fraser establishes a conceptual framework through which to respond to found images and situations. He treats panoramic landscape and the smallest details with the same intense attention, revealing the incidental beauty and strangeness of our surroundings. 

For his exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, Fraser presents his most recent body of work Mathematics. Reflecting on the idea that time, space, and everything within it, can be described mathematically, Fraser brings together a series of photographs of seemingly disparate and unrelated objects and encounters – including still lives, landscapes and portraiture. Through their oblique juxtaposition and his almost analytical focus, he draws attention to the underlying patterns and forces which shape the world and our perception of it, as well as the systems of belief through which we try to understand and describe it. In this way his work might be seen to draw our attention to the spectacular and interconnected nature of everything that surrounds us, from the sublime to the mundane. 

Peter Fraser (b. 1953, Cardiff, UK) graduated in photography from Manchester Polytechnic University in 1976. In 1982, Fraser began working with a Plaubel Makina camera, which led to an exhibition with William Eggleston at the Arnolfini, Bristol, in 1984. In that year Fraser went on to spend time living and working with Eggleston in the States. Recent solo shows include The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2002); Brancolini Grimaldi, London (2012); Tate St Ives (2013); Real Jardin de Botanico, Madrid (2017). In 2004, he was shortlisted for the Citibank Photography Prize.