June 13 – September 1, 2024
Reception for the Artist – June 22, 6 to 8pm
One of our featured artists books during our 14th Annual Photobook Exhibition, Barbara Peacock’s celebrated American Bedroom is showcased here. Produced by Kehrer Verlag, American Bedroom is an intimate and personal survey and portrait of America at it’s most private and vulnerable. This series, started in 2017 and continuing into 2023 shows the private spaces in a public way, we feel as if we are part of the families that inhabit the space.
Barbara Peacock has also been selected as the Arthur Griffin Legacy Award Winner in our 30th Annual Member’s Juried Exhibition on the walls of the Griffin Museum from June 20 – July 28, 2024.
My interest lies in the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects. I photograph the commonplace, working-class Americans, unseen, unheard, beneath notice, and yet the very fabric of our nation. I am passionate, but not sentimental about America as evident in my monograph Hometown. I am drawn to the quiet magisterial beauty of people and pursue to make the ordinary extraordinary. With this project, I illustrate my love and influence of painting. When I was a child, I watched my mother paint by window light and as a result, I am drawn to painting and interior light. American Bedroom is a cultural and anthropological study of Americans in their private dwelling: the bedroom. The nature of the project is unguarded portraits of individuals, couples, and families that reveal the depth of their character, truth, and spirit as well as America at this time in history. The images are paired with poetic and pithy quotes from each subject and are full of subtle details that invite us to contemplate the idiosyncrasies of each enigmatic life. The scope of the project is the entire United States.
About Barbara Peacock –
Barbara Peacock is an assignment photographer and director living in Portland, Maine. She studied fine arts at Boston University School of Fine Arts, and photography and filmmaking at The School for the Museum of Fine Arts / Tufts University. She began as a street photographer and gradually became an assignment lifestyle photographer and director. Her commercial clients include Disney, Nickelodeon, French’s, Arm & Hammer, Stride Rite, Merck Pharmaceutical, Tylenol, Wells Fargo & Toyota. Editorial clients include People, Newsweek, Real Simple, Family Circle, Oprah, Family Fun. In 2016 she published Hometown –1982-2015 – A thirty-year photographic project of the small town where she grew up and continued to live as an adult. Published by BazanPhotos Publishing, Brooklyn NY. Printed in the USA by Puritan Capital. Her current project, American Bedroom- reflections on the nature of life is a cultural and anthropological study of Americans in their private dwelling; their bedrooms. It encompassed the entire United States and took seven years to complete. Published by Kehrer-Verlag & Printed in Heidelberg, Germany, and released in Europe 2023 – to be released in the US in May 2024. Since starting American Bedroom in 2016, Barbara has won the Getty Editorial Grant, the Women Photograph/Getty Grant, three LensCulture Awards, four Top 50 Critical Mass Awards, and was named one of the Top 100 Photographers in America 2020. She founded a non-profit organization ‘The Nightingale Project’ that teaches art and photography to needy children. The program travels with a mix of adults and high school students. Journeys so far have been to Haiti, Cambodia and New York.
