Peter Peryer

Curator Robert Leonard writes, for the exhibition:

'PETER PERYER might appear to be an old-fashioned photographer. He works almost exclusively in black and white, and smallish. His modest images contain few tell-tale contemporary references. He makes relatively few images and seldom works in series. Each image is highly specific in subject matter and treatment - an individual. It is the result of a grail quest to capture his personal image of his chosen subject, be it animal, vegetable or mineral; person or place. Nothing is ever casual in a Peryer photo. Belying their found documentary appearance, his images often involved intense research and elaborate preparation. The quintessential phototourist, Peryer's oeuvre is like an album of odd images collected along the way. Not only does he photograph here and there, his work navigates the territory of photography's own history, its modes and manners. Rarely staging full-scale exhibitions, Peryer prefers to drip-feed his curiously loaded images into the art scene. His irregular and limited output demands that each new image be closely scrutinised for its oblique affinities with its predecessors. Peryer fans closely follow the development of his work almost in real time, as a curious unfolding autobiography; as mind-mapping.' Leonard's exhibition wall text displayed at the AAG during Nine Lives.