Interview of Peter Solarz by Basile Pesso for Yes We Are Magazine - April 2019

INTERVIEW #8 - APRIL 2019 FOR YES WE ARE MAGAZINE

PETER SOLARZ - Chicago master - PHOTOGRAPHER - PAINTER - SCULPTOR - ILLUSTRATOR - GRAPHIC DESIGNER -

Peter evolves in plenty of different styles in photography, from decayed abstract to architecture, semiabstraction, landscapes among which plenty on and around the Lake Michigan in Chicago, USA, nature images, semi-abstraction, and this compo science to which I am happy to have contributed along the years and which I have so often described in Yes We Are Magazine.

Tell us more about your start in photography...

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How does Chicago influence your creativity ?

Chicago has a beautiful dirty soul, a walkers paradise. I am fortunate to live on the lake and L trains are a hop skip and a jump to all kinds of visual delights. Unfortunately winters can be brutal but even then some frozen lake front photos make up for it.

LINKS

Peter’s YWAMag gallery (click on the grey rectangle on bottom to get to the pages after the first : 598 remarkable images). It might be the biggest gallery of the mag.

Here is, also, a very pleasant text that Peter had written on me and the mag in September 2 017, when I had reblogged his first selection ever.

My start in photography seriously started in about 1985. I was working as a creative director in publishing and was making enough money to afford a Nikon F4. Loved that camera, still have it today, deep in storage somewhere. I started taking photos to document my paintings and sculptures, primarily 35mm Kodachrome slides. I spent some time taking abstract and still life photos and documenting my family. When the first digital camera’s came out, everything changed for me and the camera became an important tool in my arsenal. Street photography also became more of a focus.

Has your professional career blocked your personal creativity in the art fields that you practice, or has it helped it, let it time to grow ?

I was lucky that I had the perfect job, I could be creative in my job during the day and go out at lunch and shoot street in downtown Chicago almost everyday. I spent a lot of time paying attention to the light and how it wraps itself around the buildings and reflections and shadows became my prey.

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Tell us more about the fields for which you are less known : sculpture, creation of objects, painting. I have broadcasted so many of your pictures but so few of the rest.

It’s funny, photography was always a minor focus for me until Tumblr. I am first a painter, trained, degree, the whole works. Second is sculpture, I love making things, can’t stop.

Third, I was a professional illustrator and graphic designer, I did that for a living, almost 40 years of that, retired now. I dabble in jewelry, 3D design and love teaching myself new things. untitled

You perfectly mix nature, abstract and architecture, and it’s extremely rare. tell us more about that, about your link with the three fields...

The mixing of photographic styles is more about the light. I don’t really go out to photograph with something in mind, it’s usually seeing where the best light is and what is happening, waiting for a phenomenon to happen, or not. I never know what I’m going to find, definitely a treasure hunt every time.

Who are your artistic models ?

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I would say some of my artistic models are, Joseph Cornell, Hairy Who, Eva Hess, Wendell Castle, Ernst Haeckel, Saul Leiter, William Eggleston and many more.

LINKS

BASILE PESSO/INTERVIEWER : basilepessoart.tumblr.com yeswearemagazine.tumblr.com instagram.com/basilepesso

PETER SOLARZ : petersolarz.tumblr.com ANNE PANGOLIN GUÉNO /GRAPHIC DESIGN : thesoftpangolin.tumblr.com instagram.com/thesoftpangolin

How did I and YWAMag influence you ?

Yeswearemagazine was the first site on Tumblr that I thought had an open point of view, the artists were varied and almost all the photos had a unique perspective. I could tell the curator was also an artist just by the choices and the promotion of interesting art and points of view. I felt at home. The first photo I ever had reblogged was by Basile and there was a comment, I couldn’t believe it. Up until that moment I had never shared any of my art or photography. I was inspired and hooked and found a photo brother across the globe.

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