Peter has been a professor
of US History at UNC-Chapel Hill since 1967. He is an author as well, publishing
two novels, along with non-fiction works on gender identity, the "right to die," and teaching.
Photography is a concurrent
passion of Peter’s, and he is most intrigued with taking double exposures in which layered images provoke multiple interpretations.
His photographs forge new meanings by superimposing images of museum and gallery goers over images of the works of art they’re
viewing. Uncanny relationships emerge bridging time and place, present and past, the real and the imagined.
Renoir's festive
couples step off the canvas and walk among the visitors in the Muse d'Orsay. A man standing in the Metropolitan
Museum is silhouetted against a brightly colored de Kooning abstract.
Experimenting is paramount
with this process, Peter says, and many attempts turn out a murky mess. When
it works, however, the result is magical. Trusting to luck creates “moments
of mystery that happen in two blinks of the camera’s eye.”