Gilles Peress
French, 1946 -
Gilles Peress is internationally known for his documentation of war and strife, particularly in Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Iran, and Rwanda. Keenly attuned to the human trauma exacted from these sites of conflict, Peress’s work offers an uncompromising view of turbulent and emotionally powerful events that are rarely captured by official reporting. Peress equates his practice with that of a forensic photographer who is less interested in creating a good photograph than in gathering factual evidence as a witness to history.
Peress is also the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, La Fondation de France, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. He is a professor at Bard College in upstate New York and a senior research fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of California at Berkeley.
