Franklynn Peterson

Franklynn Peterson
Professional data

Artist's statement:

You can’t have walked the earth for 70 years as I have, alive to its opportunities as well as its challenges, and feel good enough about what you see around you today.

Poverty humiliates more of our brethren.

Hunger hurts many many millions of innocents.

Governments are ignoring citizens who most need justice, homes, jobs—and hope.

Businesses more and more myopically see only a bottom line, but no higher calling.

I fear that when the meek shall inherit the earth, it will be only because the earth, finally, is worthless. Maybe only then will we all be equally meek.

Until then—or even hopefully to prevent “then” from damaging the physical, social and spiritual life as once nourished us all—those of us who were singled out to act wisely must act wisely and creatively, eagerly and confidently. A dismal reality is that, now, creative writers along with creative artists and photographers have been left lonely to shoulder this onerous burden to show life as it is, truly, and as it could be, should be.

I submit my work as a humble offering toward fixing what needs fixing on this Earth and among the only people who will ever inhabit that Earth. It is the only earth we have been given to care for.

Resume:

•Pioneereduse of small format cameras
which made it possible to capture intimate and revealing street scenes and other candid expressions of life in the USA and abroad. That began with early Leica film cameras, and today mostly with non-SLR digital models. (He is adamant that the flipping digital SLR mirrors introduce enough vibration to hamper hand-held slow exposures.)

• Deliberately intensified color saturation
in transparencies starting in the 1960s, which resulted in stunning color reproductions but required exceptional care and time by engravers and lithographers. Today’s digital equipment is able to digitize these transparencies and more easily print the highly saturated colors.

• Photojournalist:• Black Star Photo Agency, 1964 – present.
•Bernsen’s Int’l. Press Service, 1963-70.
•Metropolitan Sunday Newspapers, 1964-77.

•Editor:•Sepia magazine, 1965-77. Editor in Ch