Peter N. Turnley (born June 22, 1955) is an American and French photographer known for documenting the human condition and current events. He is also a street photographer who has lived in and photographed Paris since 1978.
Turnley’s photographs have been used on the cover of Newsweek 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 in 1996.
Table of Contents
- 1 Photography
- 1.1 French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris
- 1.2 Parisians
- 1.3 In Times of War and Peace
- 1.4 Paris Poster by Peter Turnley 36 x 24in
- 1.5 Vtg David and Peter Turnley / In Times of War and Peace 1st Edition 1997
- 1.6 Buyartforless Vintage Paris Bridges Skyline by Peter Turnley 36x24 Photograph Poster, Print, Decorative Accent, Wall Art, Multi-Color
- 1.7 CUBA A Grace of Spirit
- 1.8 Buyartforless Les Ponts de Paris by Peter Turnley
- 1.9 Beijing Spring
- 1.10 Paris Skyline 2X Matted 32x26 Large Gold Ornate Framed Art Print by Peter Turnley
Photography
Turnley first began photographing in 1972 in his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. With his twin brother David, he spent a year photographing the liveliness of the inner-city, working-class McClellan Street. This achievement was published in 2008 by Indiana University Press. In 1975, the Office of Economic Opportunity of the State of California hired Turnley to manufacture 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 in action 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 co-conspirator to the photographer Robert Doisneau in 1981 and like Doisneau’s commencement to Raymond Grosset, the director of the Rapho photo agency, Turnley became a aficionado of Rapho, working next door to 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 deal photographer for Newsweek from 1984 to 2001, Turnley’s photographs appeared upon its cover 43 times. In 2003, he began producing eight-page quarterly photo-essays for Harper’s Magazine.
Turnley has photographed world conflicts including the Gulf War, Bosnian War, Somali Civil War, Rwandan genocide, South Africa below apartheid, First Chechen War, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan, Kosovo War, and Iraq (2003). During the stop of the Cold War (1985–1991) Turnley photographed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev more than any supplementary Western journalist. He witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, Nelson Mandela’s mosey out of prison after 27 years incarceration, and the ensuing stop of apartheid in South Africa. Turnley was also present in New York City at “Ground Zero” on September 11, 2001, and in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He photographed the election and instigation of President Barack Obama and produced a multimedia piece on this occasion for CNN.
In 2015, Turnley was the first American player since the Cuban disorder to be unqualified 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 law was a headline exhibition at the International Photojournalism Festival Visa Pour L’Image in Perpignan, France in 2020.
Last update 2021-08-06