Peter Garfield

Concerned that "life is becoming all surface, just immediate sensory gratification," Peter Garfield uses his photography to pause for reflection. He intentionally crops all traces of context and process from his work in order to produce undefined, unsettling images. Unlike the conceptual and earth artists of the early 1970s, Garfield, a Connecticut native, leaves no evidence of the carefully engineered process he uses to simulate real life events. In actuality, each of his photographs is staged in front of an existing landscape using a 35 mm camera in one hand and a small model in the other. Garfield's work challenges the viewer to question the notion of reality, particularly as it is represented in media, photography, and film.

Engaged with photography, sculpture, video, graphics and maquettes, Peter Garfield also works in an architectural milieu. Having studied at Dartmouth College, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Garfield has received several grants, fellowships and artist-in-residencies including awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.