Photographer Peter Ziebel has been walking around Hoboken with a camera, shooting photos of the changing urban landscape off and on for the past 30 years. He kept his mind as open as his shutter – no intention or agenda – just pointing his camera whenever a scene struck his fancy. Usually, something about the light, colors, or geometry of a scene appeals to him.
“My work is a continuing attempt to depict my experience of the ever-changing face of Hoboken’s urban landscape,” he says. “I am particularly interested in the visual juxtapositions of old and new, classic and kitsch, growth and decay, public and private, the mundane and the majestic, etc., that define the visual character of this city.”
Since April 2009, Ziebel has maintained the discipline of posting a photo a day on his website, www.kingnopa.net. He calls it “a daily log of light and geometry.” That’s the inspiration for his current show in the Upper Gallery of the Museum, Hoboken Light and Geometry, A Selection of Photographs. Most of the photographs are drawn from images he’s taken in the past year, although some go back a little farther.
While not intended as a documentary series, many of the images do show scenes that have vanished or, conversely, that didn’t exist until fairly recently. Hoboken’s manmade landscape lends itself to his interest in the geometric, slightly abstracted designs that digital photography and photo editing software allow him to create. On a more conceptual level, Ziebel describes his work as “an exploration of the re-imagining of three-dimensional space within the inherent flatness of the two-dimensional photographic image.” This is his second HHM show. In 2005, his was the first photographic exhibit in the Museum’s Upper Gallery. He also contributed photos to the Macy’s Studio exhibition.
Long-time Museum members might know Ziebel from his series of photography classes in the evenings at the Museum, in which he helps demystify digital cameras and instructs people in how to get the most out of the medium. He also teaches art and photography at the Hudson School, and he published a children’s book in 1989, “Look Closer,” which inspires kids to identify objects from close-up photographs. He’s been a professional freelance photographer for the past 20 years.