A selection of photographic works

In Fragments of a Dawn Haze, Peter Wendel explores perception and the unconscious through photography, water, and light — a passage between seen and unseen.

Fragments of a Dawn Haze

To reach the interior, the body must pass through a narrow opening. The tunnel — 3.6 metres long — is not an entrance. It is a passage to the unconscious: a physical movement that prepares the body to stop orienting itself and to begin registering.

On the other side: a room in half-darkness, a well into which 31 photographic fragments are

projected. Light sinks through the restless water and dissolves the forms before they have time to become recognisable. Fluorescent lights flicker. Electric hum fills the space.

This is the borderland between night and day, between interior and exterior, between the seen and the sensed. Time is not a backdrop here — it is a material. The fragments are not remains of something whole. They are the whole.
Master’s degree project, HDK-Valand, 2025.

See moore at HDK Valand Graduation

In Capsule of Fragments, Peter Wendel explores the intersection of memory, consciousness, and photography — revealing what lingers beneath the visible surface.

Capsule of Fragments

You sit alone. Around you, a hundred years of family photographs projected onto fabric — faces, gestures, moments that were never yours but feel familiar nonetheless. Inside the capsule, three analog television screens flicker with symbolic images that recur throughout my work.

This is not an embrace. It is a confrontation with what collective memory actually is — not nostalgia, but a demand. The images ask something of the body that sits there. What do you carry that you did not choose? What belongs to you, and what belongs to the time before you?

The capsule is closed—the light flickers. Time does not move forward here — it moves in layers, cyclically, without beginning or end. There is no exit until you choose it yourself.

People in a dark room looking at illuminated displays or screens on the wall, some taking photos.

From Within

Photographic installation / Dim room / Hanging photo album pages with wires from the ceiling / Voice: Bob Hansson, Shadows Matter / Flashlights for visitors

In From Within, childhood photo albums and emotional images of adulthood meet. The pages hang freely in the darkness, illuminated by visitors' flashlights. A voice reads Shadows Matter and memories are brought to life — not to provide answers, but to raise questions about what really happened, what is missing and what is only felt but never seen.

“From Within presents painfully refined photographs by Gothenburg-based artist Peter Wendel. In three unconventional and scenographically staged acts, he processes and visualises his memories. Drawing on childhood recollections, Wendel skillfully intertwines experiences from Berlin and Tokyo — family albums and life’s transience, physical pain as a distraction from inner anxiety, lived lives etched as deep traces in the faces of the elderly. His black-and-white photographs become vessels for the existential conditions of human existence. Slow processes, time for reflection. These visual stage rooms evoke experiences reminiscent of compelling one-act plays in the theatre.”

NT, Norrköpings Tidningar, Christer Fällman

Publications

Peter Wendel’s trilogy — Behind the Sofa (2021), Missing Pages (2022) and The Suit Is Sewn in Silence (2023) — traces an ongoing dialogue between memory, time, and the unconscious.
Each book unfolds as a fragment of a larger narrative, where absence and reflection shape the image as much as what is seen.

“Thoughtful and tender images where poetry is almost physically present. An existential reconciliation with the past. You find human alienation but also moments of raw intimacy.”
Anders Petersen, about Behind the Sofa

See moore at:

Bookshop
Journal Photobooks

Le blog de Fabien Ribery
Behind the Sofa
Missing Pages
The Suit Is Sewn in Silence

Print
lacouleurdesjours, Missing Pages

Youtube
Ted Forbes about  The Suit Is Sewn in Silence
Lars Dareberg about The Suit Is Sewn in Silence