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It’s like opening a treasure box

The photography of Barbara Peacock

It’s always good to let people know where you stand, and photographer Barbara Peacock does that in the first line on her website. “If it crawls, walks, skips, runs, drools or barks,” she writes, “I can shoot it.”

It’s not bragging if you can back it up. Peacock can. She was just 4 or 5 when she became “obsessed” with photography. A few years later the feeling she got when shooting pictures was almost intoxicating. “It was like I was floating. It was so exhilarating to me.” To get enough money to buy her first camera she went to work at a bakery starting at 6:00 a.m. When a teenager takes a job at that hour, she’s serious.

Peacock moved to Portland about a year and a half ago. Two of her projects are now on display at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts in Portland--a series called Hometown. Peacock took the photos over decades in her hometown of Westford, Massachusetts. One called American Bedroom, which consists of intimate portraits of people reading, sleeping, smoking, playing and doing just about anything in their bedrooms, except having sex.

Peacock's gift is making people look at everyday scenes with a fresh eye. Working on the American Bedroom series has left her especially excited. “Honestly, it’s like opening a treasure box every time I walk into a room,” she says. “And there’s just tons of rainbows.”

You can reach her website HERE

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