![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/BicyclingonSouthSt.jpg)
Two “aha!” moments have erupted during my career as a fine arts photographer. But rather than lightning bolts from on-high, they arrived as a voice—my voice—exclaiming, “why not!” At each moment, my photography swerved in a new direction.
I began shooting seriously in the 1970s, alongside my career as a U.S. history professor at UNC, Chapel Hill. I was teaching an undergraduate seminar on “American Photography and American Culture.” Inspired by the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank, I bought a Nikon FM, took workshops at Maine and RISD, and prowled the streets of New York, Paris and other cities. I was in quest of making photographs good enough to hang in art galleries. Alas, I produced pictures that were, at best, “interesting.”
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/SmokingintheTuileries8x10copy.jpg)
Then came the first “why not!” moment, one summer afternoon in 1994 on a street in Paris. As I shot those elegant gray Parisian shutters, I grimaced in frustration. My umpteenth photo of shutters. Surely it too would fall short of the artistic image in my mind. If only I could paint playful strokes of color on the print. But I was no painter.
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ParisFacade-8x6-smallcopy-11-1024x780.jpg)
Suddenly, I noticed the abstract landscape in a gallery window, a graceful patchwork of greens and oranges. Why not! I pushed the little lever on my Nikon FM to click the shutter without advancing the film. Then I shot the painting, a second image on top of the shutters. When I returned to Chapel Hill, developed the print, and saw the double exposure, I rejoiced. A painterly photograph! Just as a painting is made over time, so is a double exposure. It thereby entices viewers to ponder it a little longer than a “straight,” split-second photograph.
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Promenade008copy3.jpg)
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ImaginingJacqueline.Photo_.jpg)
During the next twenty-five years, I concentrated on double exposures. I spent hours, especially in museums, shooting a person or scene, then looking for a work of art that would be the perfect mate when superimposed upon the image that waited on the film and in my head. If I was lucky, one or two out of thirty-six succeeded. The rest, murky or chaotic, ended in the trash. Double exposures are born in a marriage between intention and chance.
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Beaubourg1.jpg)
In Paris from the Beaubourg, I stood on the Pompidou Museum balcony and shot the predictable tourist picture of the skyline. But I wanted the untypical and unpredictable. So I walked inside and superimposed a closeup of an abstract canvas.
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Renoir13x19bestcopy.jpg)
In Renoir in the Musée d’Orsay, the ghostly members of a boating party in 1880 mingle among a group of museum visitors in 2000.
By 2020, though, I realized I was repeating myself, imitating the best of my previous work. Self-quotation is not creativity. As I wrestled with this frustration, a more decisive frustration hit: the pandemic and quarantine. How does a photographer shoot new pictures if he can’t travel to photogenic places?
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ideolgq__1571428314.jpg)
That’s when my second “why not!” moment occurred. One afternoon in my study, I began recklessly tearing up some of my photographs. As I combined the pieces this way, that way, they gradually, almost magically gathered into an unphotographic picture: a photo collage. I photographed it, tweaked it in Photoshop, and printed it.
What fun! Consider Biking on South Street, (above) for example. I excerpted the bicyclist and inserted him into the surreal Sunday Morning landscape.
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Sunday-morningOCAG.jpg)
More impulsively, I excerpted the river of Biking in Central Park, turned it ninety degrees, and juxtaposed it with a woman from a different double exposure. She became Lady of the Island.
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/BikingCentralPark8x11copycopy.jpg)
![](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ladyoftheisland8x3.jpg)
For the last two years, amid the quiet of home, I’ve been enjoying the serendipity of this latest “why not!”
To see more of my work, please visit www.peterfilene.com.
![Follow us on Facebook Facebook](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/plugins/social-media-feather/synved-social/image/social/regular/64x64/facebook.png)
![Follow us on Twitter twitter](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/plugins/social-media-feather/synved-social/image/social/regular/64x64/twitter.png)
![Check out our instagram feed instagram](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/plugins/social-media-feather/synved-social/image/social/regular/64x64/instagram.png)
Share this post with your friends.
![Share on Facebook Facebook](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/plugins/social-media-feather/synved-social/image/social/regular/64x64/facebook.png)
![Share on Twitter twitter](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/plugins/social-media-feather/synved-social/image/social/regular/64x64/twitter.png)
![Pin it with Pinterest pinterest](https://streetlightmag.com/wp-content/plugins/social-media-feather/synved-social/image/social/regular/64x64/pinterest.png)