b. Portland, OR, 1978
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

While working as a sternman on a lobster boat in Maine, Peter Holzhauer discovered a book collection that had been donated to the town library by the photographer and filmmaker, Ralph Steiner. This encounter prompted Holzhauer to shift away from producing calendar and postcard type scenic pictures of raw nature and to begin a sustained investigation of urban spaces with a large format camera.

His early output, including Los Angeles Class (2005-2007), made while he was a student of James Welling at UCLA, shows a rigorous attentiveness to the potential of “straight” or un-manipulated photography. However, Holzhauer’s work also evinces a reaction against prevailing ideals of 1970s landscape photography by his insistence on not employing repetition or the traditional notion of photographic series that is typically associated with this period.

This is even more clear in his project, The Marine Layer (2005-2010), where pictures made in his hometown in Maine are juxtaposed with still lives and urban scenes from Los Angeles. Holzhauer remains transfixed by how photography can morph the world into new and unknown facts in spite of the intentions of the camera operator.

Holzhauer’s recent work includes both still images and video depicting the fishing industry in coastal Maine; images of people working and views of contemporary life in Los Angeles; and photographs of remote landscapes in Iceland.

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