Easton Nights | Peter Ydeen
Easton Nights
by Peter Ydeen
About the Photographer
Peter Ydeen studied painting and sculpture at Virginia Tech, under Ray Kass, (BA), Brooklyn College under Alan D'Arcangelo and Robert Henry, (MFA Fellowship) and at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture with visiting artists, Francesco Clemente, Judy Pfaff, William Wegman, Mark Di Suvero and others.
After studies, Peter made his way in a variety of jobs, including set construction, lighting, illustrations, architectural modeling working in architecture, stage, advertising, and film. Later, after marrying his wife Mei li, they opened a gallery in New York City selling African, Chinese, and Tibetan sculpture.
Over the last several years Peter has concentrated on photography where he is able to use the many years spent learning to see.
Easton Nights
“Easton Nights” is a story which tells itself. Beginning as an exercise in night photography, and inspired mostly by the poetic works of George Tice, the series quickly evolved into something much more than expected. In coming to Easton in late 2011, Peter Ydeen saw a misanthrope world, only an hour from New York City and Philadelphia, but disconnected and drawn into itself. As he began to photograph the area, his mistaken impressions turned full circle. The images took on their own life, turning the negative perceptions into an infatuation, brought about by an intricate conversation with what he found to be an endlessly rich and layered patchwork of Americana.
The work put into play Ydeen’s painting sensibility and began to include more cinematic views that can be found with paintings of Edward Hopper and the animated mystical aesthetics of regional artists like Charles Burchfield. It was not about the night, but the night is the tool which isolates, spot lights and emanates. With its own color wheel and its own ethereal presence, a sweaty Toyota takes on as much life as classic Cadillac. It is not the frightening world of a John Carpenter movie, but more the surreal and beautiful world of Guillermo del Toro. The fantastic geometries we create are laid out as the lit stages that they are; the stages where we act every day. Easton area and the Lehigh Valley area where it lies is home to almost one million people and an almost three hundred year history, but still retains the small town atmosphere which mixes with a broad ethnicity and thus reflects so much of the country. It is a narrative of the subtlety of who we are, unassuming, but at the same time, permeated with the magical and mystical. “Easton Nights” is a quiet story, but a story permeated with an elegant animism and poignant to the urban America outside the big city.
