Small Stories From a Big Country

As a teenager in Switzerland, Peter Schreyer built his first darkroom in the coal cellar of his parents’ home. In the early days of his 40-year photography career, he worked through the wee hours in a makeshift darkroom that he created in his apartment kitchen with black-out curtains draped over the windows. 

The more standard darkroom at Crealdé School of Art is where Schreyer has mentored hundreds of students over the course of three decades as photography program manager, senior faculty member and executive director.

He retired as executive director in January having increased the school’s budget from $275,000 to $1.5 million with programming that now serves more than 4,000 students annually. Still, despite his monumental achievements as an administrator, Schreyer has remained committed to photography.

His artistic legacy will be on display in Small Stories from a Big Country, a major retrospective that will feature 50 often striking and poignant silver gelatin prints, all in black and white, of everyday people and places. The display, which runs through January 24, is a highlight of Crealdé’s 50th anniversary.

“The way I work as a black-and-white documentary photographer, there is a connection to reality,” he says. “I have people come to my exhibitions who say, ‘There’s something special about your work. What is it about the three-dimensionality of the people, the portraits?’ And I say, it’s film.”

Ah, film! All photographs in the exhibition were created with vintage film cameras; all are archival, silver gelatin prints, handmade in Schreyer’s wet darkroom at Crealdé. In an era where everyone can snap digital images on their smartphones, we sometimes forget how impactful old-school techniques that require both an artist’s eye and technical expertise can be.

Small Stories from a Big Country is the same title as a 2005–06 exhibition held at the Swiss Camera Museum in Switzerland—which featured Schreyer’s work—but just a handful of photos from that prior show are included in this iteration.

“The title really summarizes what my work is about—seeing special things in people’s lives and in locations,” notes Schreyer. “We are a big country with millions of stories. And those small stories are actually big stories for the people and the places I photograph.”

Schreyer, who helped found the Hannibal Square Heritage Center on Winter Park’s traditionally African American West Side in 2007, immigrated to the U.S. in 1978 and has captured the shifting cultural and physical landscape of Florida with remarkable intimacy through his work.

Small Stories documents life, often in marginalized communities, with razor-sharp images of front porches, trailer parks and corner stores among other unpretentious locations as well as the people—some seemingly happy, some seemingly haunted—who occupy those environments. Some images capture scenes in Central Florida while others were taken on the photographer’s recent travels across the United States.

“This exhibition not only highlights the artistry of Peter Schreyer’s photography, but also reflects Crealdé’s mission of storytelling, cultural preservation and community connection,” says Emily Bourmas-Fry, executive director of Crealdé.

Crealdé School of Art is located at 600 St. Andrews Boulevard, Winter Park. For more information, call 407.671.1886 or visit crealde.org.