This large-format monograph (14âłx14âł) from Nazraeli Press features 42 colour plates and an essay by Gerry Badger.
Badger gives a brief overview of Fraserâs career and shows how these recent photographs form a natural progression from earlier work. He says:
In Peter Fraser, Fraser continues his exploration of the overlooked object. The objects that have attracted his attention here are a disparate lot. They range â to pick a few at random â from two pine cones, a shard of blue glass stuck in mud, a paper aeroplane, to a drinking glass stuck behind a metal table leg. Fraser seems to be testing Hazlittâs famous contention that âall things by their nature are equally fit subjects for poetry
If one looks at Fraserâs inventory of things, one finds that some are natural, some man-made. Some are cheap and mass produced, others are lovingly man-made. Some are in use, some have been discarded. Some are new, some are old. Some have form, some are formless. In short, one could take each object and assign a Platonic value. Here is formless chaos, there a thing of value and so on. But Fraser is not looking to assign value, quite the opposite. Here, he is closer to the philosophy of Heraclitus, most widely known for his doctrine that âall flowsâ (panta chorei). All things are in flux, and the formless will become form, and vice versa. Fraser rather, is seeking to challenge the notion of hierarchies, and look â in a metaphorical sense â for the underlying forces that bind all materials together.
âPeter Fraserâ, Nazraeli Press, USA, 2006; 64pp, 43 colour plates. ISBN 1590051440. Price: ÂŁ40.
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