Peter+Campus

Peter Campus - by Sam Giagtzoglou

Peter Campus was born in New York in 1937. His mother died when he was seven, and his father and several of his family members were artists, which led him to interests in photography and painting. He attended Ohio State University, where he studied experimental psychology and was in the military for a little before working in the film industry as a production manager and editor. He started making documentaries before switching to video art during the 1970s. Campus focused on single channel video tapes and interactive video installations. One of his early video installations, //Interface//, involved a sheet of glass in a dark room, with a camera behind the glass and a projector projecting the video feed from the camera onto the front of the glass. When an audience member moved in front of glass, his or her reflection would appear on the glass at the same time as the video projection of themselves, so two instances of the subject would appear, but mirrored. In //Three Transitions//, a three sequence film by Campus, he uses two cameras on opposite sides of a paper wall and blends them together for the first sequence. He breaks through the wall, and it creates the illusion that he is breaking out of and emerging from his own body. In the second sequence, Campus uses a blue screen to superimpose his video image onto a photo of himself, and then covers his face with a paste of a color that is keyed out and matches his see through face to the image behind it. In the third sequence, he sets a piece of blue screen with his face superimposed on it on fire. media type="youtube" key="Ar99AfOJ2o8" height="360" width="480" In the 1980s, Campus put down the video camera and picked up the regular camera, switching to still photography. While Campus’ video works were narcissistically focused himself, like Krauss said video works tended to do, Campus’ shift to still images also shifted his subject matter to nature. In an interview with John Hanhardt, Campus said “For me what was important was not the switch from video to photography, but from the interior to the exterior. The interior examinations became overwhelming.” He also began teaching during the 80s, first at the Rhode Island School of Design, and later at NYU, where he works now as an associate professor.

In 1995, Campus moved away from photography and back to video, in time for the rise of digital video. One of his most recent works, //Inflections: changes in light and colour around Ponquogue Bay//, consisted of high definition televisions with digitally rendered landscapes and was showed during his show //Opticks//, held at the British Film Institute.