The Buildings Smile Back

A polite guy, Thomas Peterson was nervous when he launched his post-retirement career as a photographer. There was something unavoidably intrusive about snapping pictures of strangers on the streets.

His solution: Reduce the tension in advance by smiling broadly as you approach.

When Peterson shifted to photographing subjects without people, he continued to smile. The result: the unpeopled yet lively and colorful building facades, windows, doors, and vestibules in his current show all seem to smile back.

They are on view now, 13 archival pigment prints, all large formats of about 20 by 30 inches, in his new show titled ​“Neighborhood Walks.” They feature urban surfaces that caught Peterson’s eye during jaunts last year through New York City, Bridgeport, and New London.

An opening reception took place this past weekend at City Gallery on upper State Street. The show runs through March 29.

The gallery is a cooperative affair, with 18 member artists who alternate shows. Peterson is one of two photographer members.

In his last show there, in 2013, Peterson also shied away from people. He photographed mannequins in the large windows along New York City’s fashionable Fifth Avenue. The reflected light was what interested him; there was no statement being made, he asserted, about the human stand-ins.

There are no people in ​“Neighborhood Walks” because the aim of the series, Peterson said, was to capture ​“abstract structures we pass that we really don’t see.”

There are close-ups of paint-peeling walls, ceilings viewed from steep angles, doorways, and vestibules.

When I asked Peterson if he was on an expedition to make a series with a theme, he looked around at the works assembled at the gallery and answered: ​“This is basically about intense color. If you’re successful, you don’t look for something. You come across it.”

In this case, consciously or not, Peterson’s compositions also feature vestiges of the human. Various titles call attention to being abandoned or closed. Though there’s nothing doomsday-ish about the ​“closed” signs or the broom handles portrayed. It’s the color, but also the feeling, the images convey. They are emblems or entryways of structures that have not been evacuated, but are lived in, cared for.

One of my favorites — and the artist’s as well — is ​“Mail Call” (pictured), done back in 2006 and reworked for the current exhibition.

Yet our reasons for liking the same work turned out to be different. Peterson said that for him the photo represented a step forward, a victory in his learning. His reason for liking it is the color.

After years of trying, he said, he was able to filter out — with the help of Photoshop — the magenta and other colors that the camera was adding so that the image on the wall matched what he originally saw and wanted to record.

What I like about the image is that the mail boxes seem to be in quirky conversation with each other. They are telling me who lives in the building; they have been recently stuffed, with each box sporting a different set, style, and amount of envelopes. Show me the bills, flyers, and other mail, the image seems to be saying, and I’ll show you the different kinds of people the mail belongs to.

Peterson said he’ll switch back and forth between photographing people — for which he’s won prizes — and non-peopled scenes. When does he make the shift?

“Like a baseball player you get in a zone, and then you lose it,” he said. ​“When everything begins to look the same, you go back to doing something different.”

The idea is to stay fresh.

Still, Peterson said he’s keenly aware of the different challenges. ​“I’m more careful when I’m looking for people. I’m looking for them to be doing something. And you have to be quick. Here [in photographing facades and doorways] you have more time.”

What obtains in both cases is the smile. When he photographed one wall in Bridgeport, his friendly manner broke down the tension and attracted people on the street, Peterson reported.

They told him about the building and facade he had focused on — who had lived in the building and what life had been like there.