Peter Margonelli was an American photographer whose work abstracted the relationship between industry and the natural world. Through various means of reducing his subject’s forms, whether it be the blurring of rain on a windshield or the flattening view of a landscape from above, his images drew attention to patterns and alignments in natural and industrial landscapes. His images reflect empathy and an inner world, more aligned with the abstract work of painters like Diebenkorn than with traditional photography.

Peter’s upbringing in a small industrial town in Connecticut sparked a fascination with the transformative impact of industry on landscape. There is a sense of ambivalence tinged with sorrow in his representations of the post-industrial world – focused not on the way the landscape has been ravaged or scarred, rather, the images convey a sense of empathy and nostalgia directed at the residue of human endeavor: a sense of genuine wonder about the histories and lives that once populated these spaces. Peter's images see into spaces without occupying them, capturing fleeting moments seen in-transit or from an unfamiliar vantage point – conveying a sense of being just out-of-reach, like a landscape from a dream or a distant memory.

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Peter Margonelli