Peter Turnley

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. which aired during their exhibition, In Times of War and Peace at New York's International Center of Photography in 1996.

Education Turnley is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Sorbonne of Paris, and the Institut d'études politiques of Paris, one of the few American students ever to do so.

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 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 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 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 from 1984 to 2001, Turnley's photographs appeared on 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 under apartheid, First Chechen War, Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan , Kosovo War, and Iraq (2003) .

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, The University of Iowa, and Indiana University. 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 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

Awards Overseas Press Club Award for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad Prix Visa d'Or News Nominated - Visa pour l'Image Festival 2020, Perpignan, France