Peter Turner remembers well his first brush with the camera when his father told him to watch the birdie whilst taking a photograph. But he never did see it and always wondered what birds had to do with photographs. However, the seeds of interest had been sown and the learning process had started. An interest in Art at school led to A levels and an art related course at university where he developed skills in use of colour and developed further his interest in photography by photographing people and the adjacent industrial landscape. He spent a year at teacher training college, studying to become a teacher of art, on the edge of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales where an interest in walking led to a greater appreciation of landscape and landscape photography.

He was born in a hilly area of Northern England, the atmosphere of which has been captured in the novels by the Bronte sisters. Despite the presence of large metropolitan areas in the valleys, the rolling hilly moorland is empty, desolate and extensive except for sheep, ruined cottages and small grey grit stone villages. Like the Bronte’s Peter Turner has become intrigued with the area where centuries of history can still be felt and experienced.

He lived in Germany, near Hamlyn, for a number of years and his later work has been influenced by hazy sunsets, misty meadows, and old historical villages. Trees are a main feature of the landscape, occupying higher ground on either side of the valleys. Field patterns in the valleys are broken up by small farming communities whose half timbered houses blend harmoniously with the landscape. He has travelled throughout Europe and especially France which he knows well through his wife Laurence and her family and is at the present time building up a portfolio of work based on French landscape and people. Lately he set about learning Spanish and has made several visits to Spain and Latin America including Antarctica.

Over the last few years he has travelled extensively out of Europe and built up a portfolio of photographs from many parts of the world. His main interests remain positive in that some of the misery he has seen he has shunned from taking photographs of. Emerging nations need hope and despite abstract poverty, that certainly exists, the people are resilient and are determined to do the best for themselves and their children. In some ways they still have what we in the west lost years ago, they enjoy life, money isn't everything and despite the media telling us differently they are quite happy with their lot in life.