Black White and Gray is a series of urban landscape photographs shot along the eighty mile I-78 corridor, beginning in Pennsylvania's industrial Lehigh Valley, traveling through a cross section of both desolate and urbanized New Jersey, and then landing in the core of New York City. These are Images living in the mid tones, which find their origins in the stoic tenets of New Topographics only to wander into a romantic embrace of the often unseen animism which fills our places. This is a Lewis Baltz industrial park with a Brunelleschi perspective, or a Robert Adams trailer topped with a Fragonard Cloud. Here, geometry melds with movement, sometimes contorted. cluttered or even stretched like a rubber band, while still presenting a respect of the classic, formal and academic qualities of our built environment. There is a chimerical overlay searching for the "angels in the architecture", reflecting the dreams and concerns of the countless stream of unobservant passersby who traverse these spaces daily These are photographs which embody shades of gray, both in tone and subject matter, yet are built with tensions that set us down in an elegant romance, interacting with both our monumental shapes and structures, as well as the cacophony of our urban landscape.
Ydeen, Peter L.: - Peter Ydeen is a photographer and artist based in Easton, Pennsylvania, working in New York City and frequently traveling abroad. Rooted in Urban Landscape Photography, his work celebrates the complexity of the everyday with a romantic and introspective eye. While influenced by New Topographics, Ydeen departs from its stoicism, favoring layered, pictorial compositions. His sensibility echoes the poetics of George Tice, the lyricism of Paul Klee, the conceptual edge of Marcel Duchamp, and the vivid energy of Charles Burchfield.His signature series, Easton Nights, explores the quiet intensity of his hometown at night. Other major projects include Waiting for Palms (Egypt and Morocco), Commuter Motions and Black White and Gray (along the Easton-NYC corridor), Valley Days and Valley Days Rondels (Lehigh Valley), My Utah (Colorado Plateau), and the ongoing travel series Away. Ydeen's photographs have been widely published and exhibited, often in immersive and inventively crafted installations.Ydeen earned his BA in painting and sculpture at Virginia Tech and an MFA from Brooklyn College, where he received a fellowship. He later attended the Skowhegan School and the Sculpture Center on scholarship. He worked extensively in architectural model making and display, producing many exhibited and published models, especially for the visionary Emilio Ambasz, as well as for architects such as Philip Johnson and Michael Graves-experience that informs both the structure of his photography and the craftsmanship of his exhibitions.With his wife, Mei Li Dong, and scholar Marc Leo Felix, he co-founded Arts du Monde Inc., a New York gallery specializing in African, Chinese, and Tibetan art-a practice that continues to influence his aesthetic vision.
