Peter Marquez

Peter’s page

Goldin wrote, “I believe one should create from what one knows and speak about one’s tribe . . . You can only speak with true understanding and empathy about what you’ve experienced.

My earliest influence is of course my father.  Like all mythologies and religions gendered male, the art tradition bases my faith firmly in my father.  The books that he gave me include Robert Capa’s This is War and a book of selected photographs by Edward Steichen.

Along with these photographers my father also graced me with his own work.  It was very important for me to see the ability to create images that conveyed visual and convocational importance, especially from my own blood line.  I hold the few photographs that he gave me dear.  Some are presented here.  He had a dark room in the bathroom we still use today.

My father’s motivation and accepting of the American lifestyle (i.e. credit and debt and own ownership and law).  His success granted me the lifestyle I grew up in.  Far from the rich and wealthy but always cared for.  My father’s mission was to take care of his children.  My mother’s perseverance through my fathers more troubled years paid for his law school during the night, paid for the apartment while he was a cab driver and paid for the bills while he was traveling the world as an air traffic controller.

Conceptually and aesthetically my work questions the foundations of contemporary viewing mediums.

I know what I think (like anybody).  I know that I am a man in a time within a space that is not determined by anything but my own consciousness and involvement in that space.

My conscious involvement in my friends and the personal aspect differentiates me from McGinley, who I feel posed everything that got him famous, whose work in recent magazine publications has given me hope for editorial work.

What influences beyond photography are below the surface of your work? How do these influences appear in the form, content, and concepts of your work? (Cite example)  COVER IMAGE!

Smoking marijuana is completely an introverted experience for me.  I watched as countless youths underwent the transformation into typical extroverts. I felt nothing except what my brain intended during every drug experience.  Finding myself the audience in a movie theatre, watching through my eyes as the beautiful creatures shifted through sets.  This informed my poetic vision as an artist.

I find that my experience of life is based around the fact that I don’t pay too much attention to any aspect. I find that my friends or acquaintances give me tons of knowledge of certain aspects of human civilization but I know that the only thing I really care about is what I will be encountering next.  It is not in the silent galleries and movie theatres that I find my experience, but, in the parks at night when the fences are shadowed on white tee’s and the reflection of color in the lit cigarettes is apparent and when the expressive nature of spray paint as it trickles off a youths fingers and onto his fitted cap.

A lot of what I find in my work that differentiates from the explosion of internet images is my consistently appropriate composition.  I really learned a lot from Cartier Bresson in that the photograph must be untouchable in terms of aesthetic quality.  What I learned from the rest of my studies is that the photograph must contain an internal dialogue that resonates inside the viewer.  I plan to firmly implant my intentions inside the mind of any audience that views my work.  I find that problem is sequencing the work.

Influences on my generation…

Joseph Campbell speaks about how the priest is someone who speaks in place of god, completely in pretext, informing the public of god’s intent. History finds itself more in tune with these terms.  Campbell also speaks of the shaman as someone who has undergone an experience instead of just speaking for an experience; the shaman has undergone something that elevates them.  I like the aspect of the nature religions and shamans as disciples of nothing but their own consciousness, the pedagogical (style/process of instruction) process of realization.  As humans we are all capable of the ability to reason.

That is what built America.

Slowly are diminishing the lions of American heritage.

Computers….

Computers have presented a world where every image maker is equal.  It no longer takes a gallery to make someone famous.  I have known people who have presented images in tumblr and have gotten over 1,000 followers.

The internet has given the solution to a problem and given question to a whole other problem in itself.  If the internet allows any one person to become famous for their images than how do professional image makers become professional; is there such a thing as a professional image maker anymore?  In an age where most images are gotten of off Getty images or some other suck site.

What has been your experience as a student at Parsons, and is it what you expected?

Parsons offers me nothing but facility… it is important to remember that creativity thrives in individuality, whilst education thrives in conformation.  The most dramatic evidence I can offer is the Martin Luther King quote that Gaskins so readily fires off.

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets

that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found

neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of

capitalism but in a higher synthesis”.

Parsons is the environment where the individual is forgotten. Of course there are the brief circumstances (point) where individualism is respected.  But in general the school is processing designers who can integrate into the system that welcomes continuity where creativity is stifled because of capitalistic endeavors.  Without the university, however, we are left with a personally consumed world that could lead to a mental state comparable to W.E. Smith.

I fear that the publics’ conversation with images will become more retarded and simplified until only the most plainly stated, funny, immediately gratifying images resonate and find significance in American society.

FROM THE CLASS:

I have learned that my place in art history is in conversation with the people before me.  I am not alone in my thinking or in my style. It is the conviction I invest in my projects that gives it inherent importance.  Like the Dreamers and shamans of old the artist must believe with utmost certainty that he can influence people by the experiences he has undergone.  There is something in the images we make that relates to the community or the individual so that they can gain some instruction.  Without the spiritual relativity to modern life an image is just folklore for entertainment.  If there is one thing I wish to do it is to advance my work from pure entertainment into the realm of mythology, i.e. something that informs the people that view them.

Even if it’s as existential as living life as you deem important, god is a transcendent entity that lives in everything, because nirvana is a state of mind.

To continue on what I just wrote, art is a form of faith.  It is faith that helps us get through the day.  Faith gives us experience and individuals who have had an experience beyond conservative mindsets are in charge of delivering a doctrine to those who cannot experience for themselves.  Defining something as being “art” is analogically relative to the notion of god as a figure in time and space (bare with me).  Art is transcendent, so to speak.  As a term it is indefinable, there is art in you and I and the earth and the sky and night and the buildings but to label something as artistic is elementary.