Peter Black is one of New Zealand’s most important contemporary photographers, with some of his most significant work expressing his particular interest in Wellington City. While Black traditionally worked in black and white photography, developing his own film and making his own silver gelatin prints, his more recent work has incorporated vibrant colour, one series capturing people on city streets as they walked out into the sun.

Black’s work often encapsulates '. . . the sadness and humour, the gentle madness that prevails’, in his depictions of ambiguous and unreal situations. His works have been described as existing between the 'fictional' and 'real', and imagined as creating a 30-year-long plotless narrative. Here, Black gives us glimpses of places and people at once familiar and strange, and hints at the characters that inhabit his works.

Peter Black (born 1948, Lower Hutt) graduated from the 1975 pilot photography course at the Wellington Polytechnic. He was the first photographer to have a solo show at the National Gallery (now Te Papa Tongarewa) in 1980, and in 2003, a major retrospective of his work was held at City Gallery Wellington. In 2007, Te Papa bought 129 of his photographs, adding to his work already in their Collection. Peter Black lives and works in Wellington.