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Artist Statement

Statement

|   Statement
Statement | Love, Despair and Longing - Peter Emanuel Goldman | artmedia GALLEERY - Miami FL
A reflection called Tired, New York, 1965

My first feature film, shot in 1963-64, Echoes of Silence grew out of the life my friends and I were leading in Greenwich Village—the inner torment, the despair, the sexual hunger, the search for meaning and experience and all the things that were haunting me and the people I knew. “Wanderings without aim through the city, loneliness in the crowd... a need that devours every character condemned to search... aflame, haggard and scarred inside.” (Judith Revault d'Allonnes, Trafic, Paris, June 2014). One French critic (Henri Chapier in Combat, June, 1966) called Echoes of Silence “The best film ever made about the profound despair of the young.” The key to Echoes of Silence was in the photography—the faces, movements, light, glances, etc. James Stoller (Moviegoer, Summer, 1966) wrote that Echoes was "moving photography. …with stills so beautiful they appear to move.”

My straight photos, which miraculously reappeared after 50 years in a box sent from Paris, resemble my films to some extent and differ in others. The photos were mostly made at the time I was shooting Echoes and in the year following, before making Pestilent City, The Sensualists, and Wheel of Ashes in Paris. I would stage some scenes almost like I was directing a film—faces and shots of longing and loneliness, while many other photos were taken of my wives, children and girlfriends, as well as streets of the Village, especially at night. The city is often in the foreground instead of the background, as in the films. The camera is capturing life on the streets.

What makes a good photo? Firstly, it is something you want to look at and keep looking at. It is not only what is in the photo but what is not. A good photo has a sort of mystery as if there is much more happening than what we see. While a film plays out the scene, the viewer of a straight photo must create his own story. The subject and composition reflect the inner eye of the photographer. Composition, light, subject, faces when lined up just right make an excellent photo.

In 1961, while riding the Métro in Paris, I was reading a critique of Boris Pasternak’s poems, when I realized I didn’t want to be an academic and write about other people’s work (I was studying history at the Sorbonne and scheduled to go to grad school at Berkeley the following year.) I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I didn’t know how or in what medium. But I was driven to create. Film and writing became my main areas of expression, but still photography was also very important to me. I only hope that you will look at the photos and keep looking. They are, after all, an external reflection of my inner self.