Peter Miller

Wayfinding

Photogravure etchings by American photographic artist who lives in Japan

Main Building Exhibition Hall, 3rd floor

28.08.2013—13.10.2013

Peter Miller is one of the few practitioners of photogravure process today. In this process, photographic image is reproduced by printing from a photochemically etched metal plate. The complex photogravure process consists of obtaining a glass plate negative, creation of positive, transfer of positive image to copper plate by etching, hand-coloring the plate and printing the image with a hand-operated printing machine.

In response to the question — 'Why do you go to all this trouble?' — Peter Miller suggests that photogravures are true works of Art expanding reality and enhancing perception. Graphic and pictorial effects achieved by the method of photogravure etching clear the image of documentary details and render it integrity and artistic quality.

The selection prepared for Wayfinding exhibition at ROSPHOTO comprises Peter Miller's landscape images: river currents and waves, mists, trees, snow-clad peaks, pathways and traditional Japanese villages with their inhabitants.

Highlights

Peter Miller. Winged Fuji, 2011

Peter Miller. Waking the Gods, 2004

Peter Miller. Vanished Stars, 2009

Peter Miller. Beyond the Pale Glow, 2011

Peter Miller. Interlude, 2012

Peter Miller. Morning Glory, 2008

Peter Miller. Network-1, 2013

Peter Miller. Network-2, 2013

Broth of Life

Peter Miller. Broth of Life, 2012

About the author

Peter Miller

Peter Miller was born in 1945 in Pittsburg (Pennsylvania, USA). As a child he explored the city with his primitive box camera, attracted by steel mills, streetcars, snowscapes, ethnic neighborhoods, rivers, and bridges. At Columbia and Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s, he studied sociology, emerging from the latter with a Ph.D. and work as a consultant to Government and industry. An assignment for Honda took him to Japan, where he stayed after meeting the Japanese girl who became his wife. In Japan, continuing his photographic work, he joined the Japan Alpine Photographers Association as the first foreign member. Peter Miller calls year 1989 a turning point in his photographic career. After seeing the 19th-century photogravures of Peter Henry Emerson in New York, he returned to Japan and built a workshop, acquired an etching press, vacuum-frame ultraviolet light source, and a long list of the chemicals and materials required for photogravure etching. He started experimenting with no teacher, relying only on old books and articles.

From 2000 to 2012, Peter Miller has published 300 editions of photogravure etchings. His prints are in the collections of the Kamakura Museum of Modern Art (Japan), the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian (Washington, D.C., USA), the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C., USA), the Fine Arts Museum of Houston (USA), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Musée Jenisch (Vevey, Switzerland), and many other public and private collections. In recognition of his accomplishments in the arts, he was elected a Member of the Cosmos Club in Washington DC in 2011. Since 1991, he has held more than 30 exhibits in Japan, the United States, England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia.