![Peter Turnley](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Peter_Turnley.jpg)
Peter N. Turnley (born June 22, 1955)
nytimes.com, retrieved February 21, 2014 is an American and French
photographer
A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs.
Duties and types of photographers
As in other ...
known for documenting the human condition and current events.
He is also a
street photographer
Street photography (also sometimes called candid photography) is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Although there is a difference between street and ca ...
who has lived in and photographed Paris since 1978.
Turnley's photographs have been used on the cover of ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...
'' more than forty times.
He and his twin brother, the photographer
David C. Turnley, were the subjects of a biographical ''
60 Minutes'' piece ''Double Exposure,'' which aired during their exhibition, ''In Times of War and Peace'' at New York's
International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
in 1996.
Education
Turnley is a graduate of the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, the Sorbonne of Paris, and the
Institut d'études politiques
An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations ( research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body.
In some countries, institutes can ...
of Paris, one of the few American students ever to do so.
He has received honorary doctorates from the
New School of Social Research
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
in New York and
University of St Francis (Indiana) and Ohio Wesleyan University.
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
awarded him a
Nieman Fellowship
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University awards multiple types of fellowships.
Nieman Fellowships for journalists
A Nieman Fellowship is an award given to journalists by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University ...
for 2000–2001.
[Peter Turnley's ''The Content of Our Character'' Exhibit]
, University of Saint Francis, June 5, 2009. Accessed September 7, 2009.
Photography
Turnley first began photographing in 1972 in his hometown of
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...
. With his twin brother David, he spent a year photographing the life of the inner-city, working-class McClellan Street. This work was published in 2008 by
Indiana University Press. In 1975, the
Office of Economic Opportunity
The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. It was established in 1964 as an ...
of the State of California hired Turnley to produce a photographic documentary on poverty in California.
After an initial sojourn of eight months in Paris in 1975 to 1976, Turnley moved there in 1978.
He began working as a printer at the photography lab, Picto. At the same time, he began photographing street scenes in Paris, which resulted in the book ''Parisians'' (2001). He began working as the assistant to the photographer
Robert Doisneau
Robert Doisneau (; 14 April 1912 – 1 April 1994) was a French photographer. From the 1930s, he photographed the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and with Henri Cartier-Bresson a pioneer of photojournalism.
Dois ...
in 1981 and with Doisneau's introduction to Raymond Grosset, the director of the
Rapho photo agency, Turnley became a member of Rapho, working alongside many of the photographers of the French school of
humanist photography. He became associated with the
Black Star photo agency and was mentored by its director
Howard Chapnick. As Paris-based contract photographer for ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...
'' from 1984 to 2001, Turnley's photographs appeared on its cover 43 times. In 2003, he began producing eight-page quarterly
photo-essay A photographic essay or photo-essay for short is a form of visual storytelling, a way to present a narrative through a series of images. A photo essay delivers a story using a series of photographs and brings the viewer along a narrative journey.
E ...
s for ''
Harper's Magazine.''
Turnley has photographed world conflicts including the
Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...
,
Bosnian War,
Somali Civil War
The Somali Civil War ( so, Dagaalkii Sokeeye ee Soomaaliya; ar, الحرب الأهلية الصومالية ) is an ongoing civil war that is taking place in Somalia. It grew out of resistance to the military junta which was led by Siad Bar ...
,
Rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed H ...
,
South Africa under apartheid,
First Chechen War,
Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti,
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...
, the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan,
Kosovo War
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the wa ...
, and Iraq (2003).
During the end of the
Cold War (1985–1991) Turnley photographed Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev more than any other Western journalist.
He witnessed the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the revolutions in
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...
in 1989,
Nelson Mandela's walk out of prison after 27 years incarceration, and the ensuing end of
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
in South Africa. Turnley was also present in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
at "Ground Zero" on September 11, 2001, and in New Orleans during the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. He photographed the election and inauguration of President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
and produced a multimedia piece on this occasion for
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
.
In 2015, Turnley was the first American artist since the Cuban revolution to be given a major exposition at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana.
In 2020, Turnley created a visual diary in New York City and Paris, France, which resulted in a book "A New York-Paris Visual Diary: The Human Face of Covid-19. A selection of this work was a headline exhibition at the International Photojournalism Festival ''Visa Pour L'Image'' in Perpignan, France in 2020.
Teaching and workshops
During the fall of 2001 Turnley was a Teaching Fellow for Professor
Robert Coles for his class "The Literature of Social Reflection" at
Harvard, and he is a frequent lecturer and teacher at universities and on panels worldwide, including the Danish National School of Journalism,
Parsons School of Design, Paris, the University of Hanover, Germany,
The University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
,
The University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 coll ...
, and
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universi ...
. He was an
artist-in-residence at the Residential College of the University of Michigan during the spring semester of 2008.
He teaches workshops on
street photography
Street photography (also sometimes called candid photography) is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Although there is a difference between street and ca ...
and the photo-essay in Paris, New York City, and Venice.
Publications
* 1989: ''Beijing Spring''. Stuart, Tabori & Chang, New York.
* 1990: ''Moments of Revolution''. Stuart, Tabori & Chang, New York.
* 1996: ''In Times of War and Peace''. Abbeville Press, New York.
* 2000: ''Parisians''. Abbeville Press, New York.
* 2007: ''McClellan Street''. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
* 2013: ''French Kiss - A Love Letter to Paris''
* 2015: ''Cuba – A Grace of Spirit.''
* 2020: ''A New York-Paris Visual Diary: The Human Face of Covid-19''
Exhibitions
* ''The Content of Our Character,'' Weatherhead Gallery,
University of St Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 2009.
* ''Momentos de la Condición Humana,'' Museo de Bellas Artes, Habana, 2015.
Awards
*
Overseas Press Club
The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...
Award for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad
*
Prix Visa d'Or News Nominated -
Visa pour l'Image Festival 2020, Perpignan, France
References
External links
*
Turnley's Harper's CollectionMaine Media Workshops
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turnley, Peter
1955 births
Living people
American photojournalists
American expatriates in France
Identical twins
Nieman Fellows
Photography in China
Photography in France
University of Michigan alumni
University of Paris alumni
American twins
Street photographers
Documentary photographers
Artists from Fort Wayne, Indiana
War photographers