Adventurer. Activist. Peace-lover and demonstrator, traveler and storyteller.

All of these things describe Franklynn Peterson, whose photography show "Images from an Activist Lens: 1959-2009" is currently on display at the Steenbock Gallery. Photos from his travels to Mississippi and Jamaica, Cuba and Tokyo show Peterson's endless curiosity and eye for color and detail.

"Right from the beginning it was destined to be the works of a totally wacky, insane, driven activist back in 1959," Peterson said. He described how, with a series of protests at Woolworth's, he helped re-energize the civil rights movement in Madison while he was a student at UW-Madison.

But though the title of the show points to his activist roots, the scope is much larger. "A Real Secret Garden," shot in Japan, is a quiet image of greenery viewed through a hole in a wall, discovered while Peterson was looking for the entrance.

"Havasu Mother and Child" was taken in 1980, when Peterson and his wife Judi Kesselman-Turkel hiked down into a canyon to the Havasu River. Peterson was 42 years old at the time.

"They want you to get down the canyon while it's still cool enough (so) that they don't have to run a horseback ambulance down there," Peterson said. "There's no modern transportation into the canyon."

Images from Peterson's many adventures will show through mid-September, with a closing reception on Friday, Sept. 3.