On the Road

It was great to see Peter Brown Leighton pop up on Instagram earlier this year. We connected there, one thing led to another, and he soon sent me this mock-up book of his long-term photo collage project combining archival imagery with his street-savvy interjections. Since this is a one-off it won’t be found on other lists, or in any stores. At least for now. But it deserves to see daylight. Here’s hoping the publishing wheels can turn in Leighton’s direction, and get this to a larger audience.

Photobookstore.co.uk - “Photobooks of 2020” - Blake Andrews, photobook reviewer at-large for PhotoEye and Collector Daily

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I had to walk through this exhibition twice, and then I had to ask someone who worked at the gallery to explain to me what was going on before I could get my head around it.

Jennifer Rabin, Willamette Week, "The Eight Portland Art Shows I’m Most Glad I Saw in 2016" – Man Lives Through Plutonium Blast at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR

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How does one survive a Plutonium blast? If you’re Peter Leighton the answer may come with cool wit, scorching satire and a deadpan sense of irony that in fact, one doesn’t survive it. At least not in the typical, crawling out of a bomb shelter after the radioactive dust has settled, way in which we picture atom age survival.

Larry Lytle, Contributing Writer/Photographer - Excerpt from “Peter Leighton: Surviving a Plutonium Blast”, Black & White Magazine, Oct 2017

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Peter Brown Leighton is sort of a cross between a comedian and a magician, creating single image novelas that are at once off-kilter and humorous, allowing for a sense of confusion and whimsy within the photographic narrative. At first glance, one might miss the fact that these are constructed images using bits and pieces from a variety of found vernacular photographs, where, with a wave of a wand and a top hat, he casts his own actors and landscapes into new realities.

Aline Smithson - “Live Snakes” review Lenscratch, 2016

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Hilarious" was one of three words I wrote down while looking at Leighton's work. The other two were "triumphant" and "blithe…Because I enjoyed "Live Snakes" so much, I wouldn't mind another visit with Leighton in the future, just to see how things have progressed. I wouldn't mind at all.

Sam Anderson-Ramos, Review excerpt from the Austin-American Statesman

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Your work is marvelous and I'm not surprised that you had a powerful experience at Fotofest. I'm very pleased that you have such a good crop of further work in the pipeline. When those images are ready to serve, I hope you will make a show proposal to Blue Sky. In the meantime, I'd like to buy prints from you of "chickens and ballon man," the tornado, "man lives through plutonium blast," "man with two wives," "snake baby," "cigar smoker with pinup" and "lecherous bus rider." That's seven more prints.

Christopher Rauschenberg, Art Photographer, Collector, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR, Co-Founder, and President of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation