The Eddy (Fall 2004)

Mike Peterson’s American Vision

August 16 through September 24, photographer Michael Peterson will exhibit a selection of black and white, color and Photoshop-enhanced photographs at the Sherburne County Government Center. An ERAAA member, Peterson is a full-time photographer who has spent the past few years touring with a series of patriotic images collectively titled Flags for Freedom. The series has been published as Northland Spirit by Adventure Publications in Cambridge, Minnesota.

Peterson is a Minnesota photographer in body and spirit. Born in northwestern Minnesota, Peterson currently lives in Hackensack on an acre of land once part of his grandfather’s farm.

“My grandfather fixed watches in Minneapolis. After he got gassed in the war, he couldn’t see to fix watches. They told him he had to leave. So, he and my grandmother came up here to raise chickens and start a couple resorts,” says Peterson.

His grandfather’s move was influential to the photographer. It is the small-town life of a place like Hackensack which emerges again and again in Peterson’s work. Though his camera makes forays into the heart of the metro, the viewer gets the sense that Peterson finds his medium among the store-lined main streets, the family cafes, the hay bails and rolling vistas of Greater Minnesota.

“If they let me, I’d keep on photographing barns. I have always loved those old barns. But a lot of them aren’t there any longer,” Peterson says, referring to the housing developments replacing the fertile farmland of his youth.

Peterson’s series of barns is a labor of love, something done between assignments for his publisher and gallery shows. While fulfilling a five-book contract with Adventure Publications, Peterson has also been touring with his popular Flags for Freedom exhibit.

Flags for Freedom is so-called because of the profusion of flag imagery. The series captures the patriotic fervor which swept over America post-9-11.

“I took about three or four of the flag pictures before 9-11. It was my wife’s idea to hang them in the gallery,” he says. “After 9-11, I had people driving 80-90 miles saying they’d heard there were patriotic photos in my gallery.”

Then came one of those serendipitous moments that can alter a career. “I had a couple from New York come in the gallery. They were driving cross-country. They told that all across the country they were seeing these things.”

The “things” were the patriotic displays of flags and billboards stretching across the United States. Peterson through Minnesota and the surrounding states capturing these images. Big Lake, Becker and Elk River were some of his stops along the way. Photographs from each of these cities is in Northland Spirit.

For the Sherburne County Government Center show, Peterson plans to show images from Flags for Freedom, as well as, pieces from a series of rural Minnesota shots and a series of floral shots altered in Photoshop. A possible coffee table book of the latter is currently proposed.

Peterson’s books can be purchased from local bookstores, online from Amazon.com, or directly from Adventure Publications (1-800-678-7006).

Journalist

http://www.elkriverart.org 

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