Photography Atelier

Ann Peters

. . . the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images . . . (Plato Book VII)

In the Shadows is a photographic investigation into unexamined perceptual distortions. With a
nod to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” are we also unwitting prisoners struggling to distinguish
between appearances and reality?

Initially a respectful exploration of the beauty of the female form, In the Shadows evolved into a
response to the diminution of female autonomy. With increasing societal divisiveness, how do
we tune out the rhetoric and tune into our humanity? I approached this series as an inquiry into
how we perceive, as I believe it underlies so much discord.

In the Shadows asks us to ponder the many internal and external influences in our complex
world, inviting us to consider the essence of what we see. Even a portion of something familiar
to our senses invites us to complete the whole, with a strong bias to keeping reality in the
shadows. Will we allow unexamined ideologies, dogma and belief systems, not to mention
social media, to serve as shadows unconsciously influencing our perceptions, and thus our
thoughts and actions? Or will we take back our power and face the dissonance from challenging
the forces of these shadows?

 

Artist Bio

Ann Peters is a fine art digital photographer. A sociologist at heart, her current work merges her appreciation of form with queries into contemporary social issues. By breathing life into her subjects, Peters sometimes captures full detail and other times abstracts details to blur the lines of what we perceive, inviting exploration.  Peters studied photography with Laura Pineda and Chris Vaccaro at New England School of Photography.  Originally from the Boston area, she now resides on the New Hampshire Seacoast and dedicates a large percentage of the time she no longer spends in traffic to photography.