Unintelligent Design — Fine Art Photography by Peter B Chase

So long ago that dreams and memories have become difficult to distinguish, my love of photography began in a darkened room pierced by a beam of light, my father at the helm of the Kodak carousel slide projector. Initiation into that sacred suburban rite — the slide show — planted a tiny, tenacious idea that survives even now after thousands of revisions:

Photography can bring back wonder, knowledge, and emotion from journeys to any frontier.

Many years later I carried mother's beautiful Leica M3 around campus, and reveled in the analog alchemy of my images slowly materializing at the bottom of trays filled with liquid developer. I still believed in those frontier journeys. And I still hoped to return with a roll of Pan X film capturing some gnosis unavailable in ordinary life. University, art school, and many pilgrimages- physical and chemical - followed.

My journeys are farther afield now, and this site is my message in a bottle.

Unfurl a few of the notes inside.

— pc, 2026

Peter B. Chase's poems have a fondness for life's physical and emotional flotsam: cardboard boxes, old sweaters, an elevator, a baby grand piano, a spinning wheel, a skull thrown from a balcony. Chase trusts the reader and almost never announces the significance of these objects, but lets the metaphorical weight accumulate as the highly personal verse unfolds.

His photographer's instinct — to put "little brackets" around things — is also his poet's instinct. The images are likewise highly eclectic — from exotic landscapes to surreal macro worlds to urban street photography. They are all made with the same restless instinct — to reveal what is evocative — whether the subject is a galaxy from a mountain top, or a naked mannequin in an alley.

Initially it all seems a bit of a dog's breakfast, but when you look a little deeper surprises surface: the stillness of a Shan shui painting, the unflinching directness of a Diane Arbus, or even, in his very best landscapes, the sweep of a Sebastião Salgado — all refracted through the vision of a guy who's been at it since the 1970s, and still hasn't decided what he wants to be when he grows up.

This melding of Light and Language — poetry and photography — does not come with a familiar formula. We cannot say the images illustrate the poetry or that the poetry is an explanation of the pictures. Seemingly random juxtapositions create unresolved tension that entices the viewer to envision the connection between the two — the results can be singular.

The gallery Dreams and Memories begins with this short but highly evocative poem.

Boxes
I carried cardboard boxes filled with books, pots and pans, and clothes,
up the stairs to my new apartment
I counted each of the twenty four steps
One for each year it had been, since I last lived alone

It's followed by a photograph of a sketch of a young boy, staring directly at the viewer. However it appears decayed and is falling out of its frame. The face is partially obscured by an adult hand that seems to be waving the viewer away, yet the direct gaze of the boy penetrates effortlessly. The result is unsettling but strangely poignant.

Mr. Chase calls it "Documentary Surrealism," which is either an authentic aesthetic philosophy or a very clever way of saying "I make it up as I go." Possibly both?

Mr. Chase studied art and photography properly, at actual universities, so there's concept and technique under the chaos. But his real education has been in the decades since, traveling the world second guessing his choice to carry a heavy pack with camera gear. He now lives in Virginia with his remarkable girlfriend and a zero-pet policy.

So is it art? Pity, but you'll have to decide. Peter's just going to keep making the pictures either way.

May 2026

Hello World!

Welcome to version 1.0. Building a site has been on the old mental to-do list for some time, but as I've zero web design background instead my energy had been spent inventing excuses and polishing my procrastination skills. But as luck would have it AI technology finally caught up with my ignorance! I can sincerely say diving into the deep end of the internet pool has been a bracing experience I've truly enjoyed — my sincerest thanks go to my (literally) tireless and infinitely patient assistant Claude.

Stay Tuned

Periodically I'll be adding new images, new functionality and hopefully fix more things than I break. All of the current photos are from, I believe, the last 4 years, but before long I'll be digging in the archives and post some "classics". :-)

Contact Page

Any comments, suggestions, sycophantic praise or basically anything on this side of mean comments about my mental health are encouraged and appreciated.

© 2026 Peter B Chase. All rights reserved. All images on this site are the exclusive property of Peter B Chase and may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without written permission. Unauthorized use is a violation of federal copyright law and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including but not limited to, a full body wax administered by a really rough, six-foot-tall Swedish woman, those really really cringy photographs your girlfriend took of you in high school being published online and possibly something involving a plague of locusts, or other bad stuff.