Notable Works & Recognition

Minor White — The Frontispiece

Minor White was the founding editor of Aperture, and for two decades the person who decided what serious photography looked like. In 1973, Aperture Volume 17, Number 2 opened with a photograph by Peter de Lory — listed in the contents as “Frontispiece and Photographs,” the very first image in the issue, before any text.

The section is titled “the room” — the same Pacific Heights Mansions work that Tony Ray-Jones had recognized as genuinely original.

“The phenomena of life may be likened unto a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the glistening dew, or lightning flash, and thus they ought to be contemplated.”
— Diamond Sutra, chosen by Minor White for this issue

In 1990, Aperture published Peter de Lory a second time, in the Special Edition No. 120, Beyond Wilderness. Some photographers appear in Aperture once. Peter de Lory appeared twice, across seventeen years.

Classmate of Annie Leibovitz

Peter de Lory attended the San Francisco Art Institute from 1967 to 1971. Among his classmates was Annie Leibovitz. The SFAI of that period was one of the most vital photography programs in the country — shaped by Haight-Ashbury, the counterculture, and a faculty committed to photography as art rather than commerce. Peter de Lory arrived at nineteen, in the middle of all of it.

Center of the Eye — Aspen

Before he graduated from SFAI, Peter de Lory was already working summers at the Center of the Eye in Aspen — in 1967 and 1968, a gathering point for the most important photographers in the country. He worked in the darkroom alongside Paul Caponigro and encountered Jerry Uelsmann, Garry Winogrand, and Bruce Davidson. He held his first solo exhibition there in 1971.

Hunter Thompson and the Aspen Years

The Center of the Eye placed Peter de Lory in Aspen’s cultural life in the late 1960s and early 1970s — the same valley where Hunter S. Thompson was based, in Woody Creek, writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Peter de Lory photographed Thompson. After Thompson’s death in February 2005, one of those photographs appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.

— Specific issue details to be confirmed before publishing.

Held by the Smithsonian, Walker Art Center, SFMOMA, and More

Peter de Lory’s work is held in fifteen public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Canada, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Tangled Deer, Utah (1991) is held by the Nevada Museum of Art in the Carol Franc Buck Collection, and work is placed worldwide through the US Department of State Art in Embassies program.

National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship — 1979

The NEA Photography Fellowship is among the most competitive photography awards in the United States. Peter de Lory received it in 1979, alongside the Western States Arts Foundation Fellowship (1976) and the California Arts Council Fellowship (1990) — peer-reviewed awards from the institutions that fund serious art in America, not commercial competitions.

Champion — Sea-Tac Airport (2003–2013)

Commissioned by the Washington State Arts Commission for Sea-Tac Airport’s South Concourse, Champion is among the most ambitious works of Peter de Lory’s career — and the one seen by the most people. He photographed the Noland Creek Redcedar, the tallest Western Red Cedar in the world; the image was translated into a 17-foot-high mosaic in glass and stone by Stephen Miotto and the Travisanutto Mosaic Studio, fabricated in Spilimbergo, Italy, and permanently sited in 2013.

→ Read the full Champion story

Sound Transit — Thirteen Years Documenting a City Being Built

From 2000 to 2013, Peter de Lory served as artist-in-residence for Sound Transit, documenting the construction and opening of five light rail stations from Seattle to Tacoma. The result was Railwork — a 48-page catalog and a permanent record of one of the largest infrastructure projects in the Pacific Northwest. → Railwork

Seattle Public Utilities — Citywork (1999–2000)

The year before Railwork, Peter de Lory completed an equally ambitious residency with Seattle Public Utilities, photographing the entirety of SPU’s operations: 170 photographs, 66 pieces, exhibited at Bank of America Gallery in April 2000 and installed permanently throughout SPU facilities. The Seattle Arts Commission residency at the Seattle Water Department (1996) preceded it. → Citywork