Peter Ydeen (born 1957) is an American photographer and artist, known for his nocturnal urban landscape series Easton Nights, documenting Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley at night,[1] as well as his travel series Waiting for Palms, photographed across Morocco and Egypt.[2][3] He works within the tradition of urban landscape photography, a genre that highlights the everyday urban environment.[1] Critics have described his photographs as urban still lifes where seemingly ordinary elements become protagonists on a stage.[4] Ydeen lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, and works in New York City.
His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at museums and university galleries in the United States and Europe, and among his magazine features are the publications Domus, Vogue Italia, and Gente di Fotografia.
Early life and education
Peter Ydeen was born in 1957 to Lieutenant Colonel Brooks C.Ydeen and his wife, Barbara, growing up with four siblings.[5]
After completing his studies, Ydeen continued to pursue his art, exhibiting watercolors and box art in New York galleries during the early 1990s including solo shows at Windows on White and Jadite Gallery.[11][12] In 1992, he participated in a three-person watercolor exhibition at Arts du Monde on Spring Street in New York representing three generations of artists: Keith Crown, Crown's student Ray Kass, and Kass's student Ydeen, accompanied by an essay by art critic Howard Risatti.[11][13]
Model-making and technical work
Ydeen's early professional work focused largely on model-making but also encompassed set construction, lighting, technical illustration, advertising, and work in stage and film production. He was part of the art department for the 1986 film The Manhattan Project.[14]
Active in New York's model-making community,[15] Ydeen served as director of Joseph Zelvin Models Inc.[16] and managed the model shop for architect Emilio Ambasz. In the book which accompanied the 1993 Tokyo Station Gallery exhibition Emilio Ambasz: Architecture & Design, 1973–1993, Ambasz gave recognition to Ydeen for building the models which represented the previous five years of his work, and the majority of that exhibition.[17] Ydeen is also credited with over a dozen models published in Emilio Ambasz: Inventions – The Reality of the Ideal (Rizzoli, 1992).[18] His models have since appeared in exhibitions, including the 2025 Venice Biennale.[19]
Gallery ownership
Ydeen married art dealer Mei Li Dong in 1991 and together they operated Arts du Monde, Inc., a gallery in New York City specializing in African, Chinese, and Tibetan sculpture.[20][21] The gallery imported works from Asia and operated from the mid-1990s through at least 1998.[20]
Photography
Ydeen transitioned to photography around 2014–2015,[7] with his early work including daytime urban landscape and motion blur photography before moving towards night photography.[22] His first major publication was in Silvershotz magazine in August 2016, featuring his night photography under the working title "Dark," which later became Easton Nights.[23]
Easton Nights
In 2015, Ydeen began photographing at night in the Easton, Pennsylvania area, initially inspired by George Tice's night photography, particularly Tice's photograph Petit's Mobil Station.[24] His work quickly evolved from black and white to color as he became fascinated with "the night's own color wheel" created by artificial light sources. In his lectures, Ydeen explains that because the human eye cannot perceive color in low light, the camera sensor captures colors mixed from artificial light sources that remain invisible to the photographer at the time of capture, producing a color palette distinct from daylight photography.[25] The series uses the absence of people to reveal the character of the urban landscape, its neon lights, signage, and architectural details illuminated under artificial light.[26]
His aesthetic also draws from the painting traditions of Charles Burchfield, Marsden Hartley, Charles Sheeler, and Paul Klee, as well as the literary works of E.T.A. Hoffmann and George MacDonald.[7] Ydeen considers Burchfield "the single most influential artist for my current work" due to their shared subject matter of small town urban landscape.[7] Ydeen cites the influence of Hoffmann's desire to bring readers inside his imaginary worlds to tell a story, a concept he applies to his night photography through perspective and composition to draw viewers into the experience of place.[27][24]
The series has been the subject of numerous publications. Writing in Gente di Fotografia, critic Loredana Cavalieri described the photographs as "urban still lifes" in which "ordinary elements... steal the scene" to become "protagonists."[4] Dr. Leo Hsu observed that Ydeen "makes mysterious photographs that depict places that we generally ignore and overlook," noting that "Easton Nights is very much about this moment in the early 21st century."[28] Journalist Michael Ernest Sweet compared Ydeen's work to William Eggleston.[29]
The series has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, beginning with Ydeen's first solo show at Brick and Mortar Gallery in Easton in 2018.[30]
Valley Days
Valley Days is a companion series to Easton Nights, featuring daytime photographs of the Lehigh Valley. The series explores the same urban landscape subject matter in daylight conditions.[31]
Commuter Motions
Commuter Motions documents Ydeen's daily eighty-mile commute from Easton, Pennsylvania, through New Jersey, to New York City. Using a time-lapse approach, the series captures the energy and movement of the journey, building images from segments of continuous motion. The photographs move away from the "decisive moment" toward concepts of perpetuity, fleeting moments, and dynamism explored by late 19th and early 20th-century artists.[32]
Black White and Gray
Black White and Gray is a series of urban landscape photographs shot along the Interstate 78 corridor from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley through New Jersey to New York City. Working in gray tones and drawing on New Topographics subject matter, the series diverges from that movement's neutral and objective sensibility toward a more romantic vision.[33] The series was published as a book in 2025, with an essay by Colton Klein.[10]
Waiting for Palms and travel photography
Waiting for Palms is a travel photography series photographed during two trips across Morocco and Egypt, beginning in 2016. The series won first place in the All About Photo Magazine #45 "Travels" contest in 2025, with images featured as the magazine's cover.[34] The series has been exhibited in Rome and at Trieste Photo Days.[35][36]
The series was featured in Domus, where curator Camilla Boemio described Ydeen as "a careful wanderer" whose photography "does not frame, but receives."[2]Vogue Italia also featured the series, presenting the Moroccan photographs as a diary of the trip.[3]
Away is an umbrella title Ydeen uses for his other travel photography, documenting urban landscapes from his extensive journeys abroad.
My UTAH
My UTAH is a series of photographs taken during a month-long journey around the Colorado Plateau in fall 2024. Rather than focusing on the region's grand views and dramatic rock formations, the series emphasizes immersive qualities such as light, texture, saturated colors, and arrangements of mass in space. The series received an Honorable Mention at the International Photography Awards in 2025[37] and was featured in L'Œil de la Photographie[38] and PRIVATE Photo Review.[39]
Ydeen has participated in group exhibitions internationally, including several shows at Space – Millepiani Rome through LoosenArt,[56]Street Sans Frontières in Paris (2017),[57] the Rust Belt Biennial at Wilkes University (2019),[58]Trieste Photo Days (2023, 2025),[59][36] the TRYST Alternative Art Fair at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles (2024),[60] and the juried centennial exhibition Here & Now: 100 Years of LUAG at Lehigh University Art Galleries (2025–26).[61][62]
Publications
Books and catalogues
Peter Ydeen: Easton Nights (Albright College, 2020) — A 72-page exhibition catalogue with essays by photography professor Leo Hsu and scholars Dana Stirling and Yoav Friedlander[28][63][64]ISBN978-1-7338981-3-3
Commuter Motions (Easton Nights Inc., 2023) — Photographs taken along the Interstate 78 corridor from Easton, Pennsylvania to New York City[65]ISBN979-8-9892411-0-1
Black White and Gray (Easton Nights Inc., 2025) — Urban landscape photographs along the Interstate 78 corridor ISBN979-8-9892411-3-2
↑Villa, Elisabetta A. (December 1, 2025). "Peter Ydeen "Waiting For Palms" Opening". Getty Images. Retrieved January 31, 2025. Abdellatif Jihaoui, Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco, attends the Peter Ydeen "Waiting For Palms" curated by Camilla Boemio Opening at AOC F58
↑"Peter Ydeen". Exibart (in Italian). Retrieved January 18, 2025.
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