In the Mind's Eye: Peter Masters Virtual Exhibition

Welcome to my virtual exhibition sponsored and hosted by Newcastle Libraries.

My exhibition is entitled ‘In the Mind’s Eye’ because I hope as you make your journey through the 23 photographs presented here, you will see that from the starting point of my imagination, a story is told that your imagination can take up and start on new paths. Story telling is perhaps the most ancient of all the arts, probably based around campfires for a large part of the millions of years of our human journey. Stories are so important to us that as humans even when we sleep the brain stays up all night, telling itself stories. Photography for me is a wonderful form of storytelling, presenting a finished image that had its beginnings in my mind’s eye and then takes on a life of its own in the perception of the viewer.

In these images you will see pictures that I have made, not simply taken. I think photography becomes art when the image is imagined, takes on form, is crafted, bent, reshaped, added to, subtracted from and manipulated to be finally realised. Much of my work is composited, digital elements added sometimes with subtlety, sometimes very up front such as in the conceptual pieces of geishas exhibited here. In these, layers of composite images illustrate a symbolic tale, in this case about inner beauty and the strength of strong, independent women.

Albert Einstein was once asked how we could make our children intelligent. “If you want your children to be intelligent’ he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." I hope he really did say that. I think sharing the fruits of our imagination really matters in the world.

In these 23 images you will see animal portraits, still lifes inspired by the Dutch masters, pictures that ‘work’ and are visually satisfying because of what they owe to the building blocks of nature and the mathematics that guide the shapes of the natural world. I hope they sit well in your mind’s eye.

Read Peter's Bio here.