Sarah Ipson - Artist Post 14

Mark Peterson

1. Mark Peterson is a photographer located in New York. He is a well known photographer taking for photos for Time Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and a couple other renowned news editorial agencies. Since 2013 after the government shutdown, Peterson decided to change up the game a bit with his political photography. Usually in a sense there is a color scheme that goes with the elections whether it be the red, white, and blue, or in the recent years the rainbow colors taking a stronghold in political candidacy as well. Although this race seemed different. To take away from distraction all color was stripped down to the bare bones of black and white, but what is so distracting? The urge for power.

2. Peterson's goal for the Political Theatre series was to originally strip away all color of his photographs so you could feel the sheer emotion in every picture. In some pictures the color can be very distracting, and with political candidacy there is no exception. With political candidacy sometimes all of the colors of the red, white, and blue, the rainbow flags flying, banners being held, american flags waving, sides being taken, sometimes we get lost in the colors and the situations going on around the subjects rather the focusing on the subjects themselves and what's been going on, and this election it was pretty candid as to what was going on, a political theatre. This year seemed to be more of a spectacle of everyone's entertainment rather than something that was to be taken seriously, well at least from one side of things. So Peterson made the goal to strip everything down to black and white so you can focus on the main thing; the fight for power. 

3. The feeling I get when I look at these photographs is a slight feeling of intimidation. Being that there are no colors to focus on or get distracted by all you can feel is the raw emotion and it can be rather intimidating. When the colors are kept in photographs it is easier to skip over the expression of someone's face or not focus on it as much. When the colors or backgrounds are stripped and backgrounds are minimal all you can see and feel is the emotion that was taken at the time of the photograph, and in this setting even with children it feels intimidating.