Peter Happel Christian

Sword of the Sun is an evolving riff on the experience of time and how photography is central to the measuring of its passage. Pictures slice time, like a sword, into bits and pieces and objects offer tactile evidence with which no image can ever compete. The title is drawn from a short essay by Italo Calvino where we hear the the main character contemplate his place in the world while drifting through a nameless sea at sunset. This work is my attempt to gather, reassemble, and propose the arc of time, made visible through pictures and objects, as is transits through my life and the world around me.

Sword of the Sun, September 30 - November 4, 2016, Convergys Gallery, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sword of the Sun was organized by Will Knipscher as part of Cincinnati's FotoFocus Biennial 2016.

Pictures courtesy of the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

2015

As time skids forward — dragging history, impressions and the things of these photographs — I have come to realize that the sword of the sun is the sharpest edge in the world.

self-published book, 2015
soft cover, perfect bound
10" x 8" x 3/8"
126 pages; 94 photographs, darkroom experiments, and writings
edition: 50, plus 10 special edition copies and 15 artist copies
printing: digital offset
design: Peter Happel Christian
special feature: unprocessed sheets of resin-coated darkroom paper serve as end papers to the book and slowly record unstable, ghost images of the front and back cover images.
Printed and bound at Conveyor Arts, USA
ISBN: 978-0-692-44536-5W

Special Edition books include one of two different original photographs tucked into the book. Each photograph is in an edition of 5, printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl, and are signed and numbered on the back.

2013 - 2014

The exhibition, Sword of the Sun, very loosely intimates the contents of a story of nearly the same title in the book, Mr. Palomar, by Italo Calvino. In the story, the reader hears the internal monologue of an elderly man, Mr. Palomar, while he is swimming in a nameless sea at sunset. Altogether, the work in the exhibition is a drift through the wilderness of my home and yard, a skid through the nature of time and an examination of how we fragment and compartmentalize the world for the purposes of contemplation and understanding.

Sword of the Sun, February 7-March 14, 2014, Law Warschaw Gallery, Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota.

Read a review of the exhibition by Lex Thompson.

2013 - ongoing

An infinite field is a simultaneously open and closed space. A space for limitless exploration and a space with defined boundaries.  An evolving space and an impossible place.

2016-2017

I can't stop taking pictures of DIY car repairs with my phone.

Spiral bound photo book, laser prints, 11" x 8.5", 25 pages, edition of 5, numbered and signed, plus 2 artist edition copies. Printed and bound in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, USA.

Included with each book is a Little Trees "new car" scent car deodorizer, tied to the spine with dental floss, and a numbered and signed print (7.5" x 5.5") on Hahnemuhle Silver Rag. 

Available at the inaugural Pitch Project Artist Book Fair, Milwaukee, WI, February 4, 2017. The price of the book will be set to the estimated cost of 10 gallons of unleaded gas in Saint Cloud, MN - approximately $22.93.

2015-16

I built a set of posable table legs out of lumber to support a table top to make a series of still life photographs. I never made those pictures. I proceeded to photograph the lumber form. A part of my process became my primary subject.

Lumbering Form exists as a unique set of 14" x 11" prints as well as a unique, handbound photobook, 10.25" x 8.5" 1.25" 

2010 - 2014

"So also is the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places in general, and in the half wild parks and gardens of towns." John Muir (1901, c. 1909)

Half Wild is a motley group of photographs that grapple with the idea of wilderness and the image legacy of the American West. Its title is drawn from a passage in the book, “Our National Parks,” written by John Muir in 1901. Early in the book, Muir characterizes the parks and gardens of towns as half wild and celebrates the public’s growing interest in the natural environment as a spiritual and rejuvenating place. During the summer of 2011, I removed three large shrubs from my front yard during a landscaping project. In the process of pulling the root balls from the ground, a rusted animal trap popped out of the dirt. With Muir’s words in my mind, I suddenly recognized the latent wild character of my residential landscape. Could this familiar landscape, now a terra incognita, captivate me in the way one might view a pristine valley from a mountaintop? 

Half Wild was published by Conveyor Editions in September 2014. The hardcover book is 112 pages and consists of 49 color and black & white plates along with images in the accompanying essay. It was designed by Elana Schlenker and the essay, Terra Incognita, was written by Liz Sales. View the entire essay and plates section online here. Editing and sequencing was performed under the astute guidance of Christina Labey. You can purchase your copy through the Conveyor Editions website.

*Named a best photobook of 2014 by Humble Arts Foundation.

*Review of Half Wild by Adam Bell on PhotoEye.

*Featured on It's Nice That.

2010 - ongoing

archival pigment prints, various dimensions

Black Holes and Blind Spots (2010-ongoing) is inspired by American Transcendentalism. Rather than escaping to a utopic wilderness refuge as one might expect, Happel Christian photographs residential suburban landscapes to explore whether it is possible to have spiritual experiences in such ordinary, modern surroundings. He then digitally alters the images with black spots. These spots work metaphorically for Happel Christian to pull the viewer into the images, like a black hole. The spots obstruct the viewer’s vision by concealing the focal points of the images. This strategy serves to constantly remind the viewer of the constructed nature of photography, rather than allowing the viewer to become absorbed in contemplation of the image. Similarly, just as photographs are representations of the world, suburban residential landscapes are constructed and tamed versions of nature.

~ Curatorial Staff, Midwest Photographer’s Project, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

2007 - ongoing

Clear As Day is an ongoing collaborative adventure with Phillip Andrew Lewis (Chattanooga, TN).

Visit the Clear As Day website.

Visit our Land_AA website to purchase books and prints.

2014

Things Boulders Ate mixes typologies of parking lot boulders and objects of wonder from my studio. One typology studies the use of boulders as subtle signifiers for Nature as well as physical barriers for automobiles. A second catalogues a random selection of objects from my personal wunderkammer. Mixed into the two sequences are seemingly unrelated images. These outliers disrupt the pattern and rhythm of the book while suggesting connections between disparities. Mingled together, the typologies and outliers fuse into a singular, but disjointed, archive of weight, wonder and display.

Things Boulders Ate was published by Mystery Spot Books in December 2014. The softcover, saddle stitch book is 40 pages and consists of 24 color images. It was designed by Chad Rutter. You can purchase your copy here.

2010-2011

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, January 20 - April 3, 2011

Look around you, touch the ground, smell the air.

"Ground truth" is information gained by a meteorologist about an extreme weather event from an eyewitness in close proximity to the actual event. The meteorologist learns the ground truth of a situation while viewing radar generated graphics of the event on a computer screen. The eyewitness account can confirm, discredit or complicate the digital information, but action, such as issuing a tornado warning, is rarely taken without a ground truth assessment. Within this specific social interaction between meteorologist and eyewitness is a metaphor about human perceptions of and experiences in the natural world - empiricism persists within the realm of digital representation.