Like my previous subject, Melanie Walker, I first met Peter de Lory in San Francisco during the late 1980s/early 90s, when he was teaching photography at San Jose State University. I knew him at that time for his narrative-based triptychs, which he describes as “a focal point for all my earlier thoughts and sensibilities” (http://www.peterdelory.com/about-face). Much of those thoughts and sensibilities had coalesced in Colorado during the late sixties/mid seventies, studying photography at Center of the Eye in Aspen, at CU Boulder, and at various workshops in the American West. As he describes in our interview, he left Colorado for Idaho in 1976 to direct the Photography Department of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities. He has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1994.
Rupert Jenkins: You grew up near Cape Cod and moved west for undergrad studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, I think.
Peter de Lory: Yes. I was there from 1967 or ‘68 to 1971. My two brothers had already gone there, and I had visited in 1964 or '65. Also the cultural revolution was there, and I wanted to be part of that for sure. The Art Institute was a very interesting place in itself. Edward Weston had taught there. Ansel Adams ran the program with Minor White, Paul Caponigro was there. Jerry Burchard. It was a pretty hot place for photography on the west coast. John Collier Sr., and Jack Fulton had just shown up. Linda Connor hadn't moved there yet – we were like two ships in the night. I met her just as she was getting ready to teach there. We became close friends.
RJ: And then you went to Aspen, to Center of the Eye?
PdL: In early spring 1969 I had a girlfriend who was at CU Boulder and I visited her there. She had a sister in Aspen. I asked someone what was going on in photography there and they said there’s a man and woman named Cherie Hiser and David Hiser—Cherie Jenkins was her first name—and they’re about to start a school, you should talk to them.
I’d met Cherie at the SPE conference in 1968 in Oakland, and then at Christmas we met again and she invited me [to the workshop]. I went for three summers. I worked in the lab and did these crash courses. I met Minor White, Jerry Uelsmann, Bruce Davidson, Winogrand, the list just goes on and on. The workshops and Aspen, all that vibrancy, people coming in and out, people from different parts of the country, that mixture of people, it was a great time.
Peter de Lory: Cherie Hiser, Center of the Eye, Aspen, 1969.
PdL: Then in 1971 I went to graduate school at CU Boulder (MFA, 1974). I was the second student to graduate from the program—Barbara Jo Revelle was the first. I get to grad school and that fall or spring Minor White called and had me do a whole suite of my work for Aperture—a whole quarter issue while I was still in graduate school (Aperture 17:2, 1973).
Having work in Aperture was something I’d always wanted, but after that I didn’t know what to do. Spring was coming up and I got a call from Cherie saying she was moving to Sun Valley, it’s a cool place, do you want to come up and run the lab, and I said, “Sure.” So I drove up there in my little VW and was there till 1978. Eventually I became director after Cherie. Then I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of here and do something else.’ I got an NEA grant and just traveled for about six months, then went back to San Francisco eventually.
RJ: You’ve mentioned Minor White a few times. How big an influence was he on you?
PdL: Oh, we were very close. I met him through my brother. We went to his house in Arlington and he immediately looked at my work and said, “Wow, this looks interesting, can I keep these?” I think I’d met him on the fly at Center of the Eye. I didn’t hear back from him until I got back to San Francisco. He said, “I have to think about this, can you send me all the work you’ve done so far?” I said, “Sure, no problem,” then he says, “I want you to be the assistant for me at the workshops in Rochester next summer,” and I said, “Sure.” So, I had a great relationship with him, which is unusual actually [laughs]. He was a very genial guy, very supportive. Also, he picked up the work I had and gave me a show at MIT, and we traded. He was really unbelievably supportive.
RJ: Anyone else who was especially influential on your work?
PdL: Oh, a number of people for various reasons. Minor, Frederick Sommer for sure, Paul Caponigro. He was a student of Minor’s at the Art Institute. Weston of course—clarity of seeing, and Minor was taken by that part of Weston.
Peter de Lory: Double O Ranch (Once Upon A Time In The West), 1989. Gallery Above: Top L-R: Self Portrait, 1969; Floating, Colorado, 1969; Grottoes Rock, 1970. Bottom L-R: Colorado Rover Shore, 1969; Leg in the Barth, 1971; Grottoes, 1970.
RJ: Where do you place your triptychs from the late eighties, in terms of the landscape genre?
PdL: Part of my work is based in the social landscape of our culture, you know? The American West, the myths of the West, embracing this place. Photographing to me is taking really strong notice, and really slowing down, looking at what you’re looking at. Minor was perfect at that. A sense of you being there. If I’m in the presence of that, then perhaps my perspective can be transferred to somebody else’s thinking.
RJ: Your image of an arch in Once Upon A Time In The West (1989) has always stayed with me. That’s an iconic symbol of the West.
PdL: At that time I was reading a lot of Wallace Stenger, and a lot of the American West writers: James Welsh, Edward Abbey of course. It came out of that, reading all that and being in the West. The writing would be so fluent. I thought, how could I make my photographs be like writing? I just wanted, in my small way, to dip into the semi-industrial parts of the West, make a dip into that kind of severity and rawness of the land. I wanted a balance between the two, of being a social landscape and a landscape of awe, basically.
RJ: Some images crop up in different series of yours. You re-use them.
PdL: Yeah, because there’s a continuity of subject, but maybe in a different context. It’s like you’re a singer and you make an album and you put in a couple of older songs with some new ones too—it’s kind of like that. I’ve been photographing this little island, Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands, and I showed my prints at the San Juan Museum with two sculptors and print makers. All the work was very contemplative; it was like taking one long walk, traveling through slowly in a real contemplative way.
I guess the way I look at it is this—when I go to Europe or someplace I can’t photograph very well because I just don’t know the place. This Lopez thing, I just photograph organically, and then about two or three years later I’ll print it. And then it all comes back. … So I call it slow photography. Someone will say “That’s a new triptych,” and I’ll say, “Yes it is,” but I photographed it in 1989. It just didn’t come together until this point.
Peter de Lory: Alex Sweetman & Jay Manis, Center of the Eye, 1969.
RJ: Any last thoughts about Colorado?
PdL: Well, at CU we were pretty isolated in a sense. But Center of the Eye and Cherie, that was incomparable—the timing of that with that culture was just perfect. I can’t tell you how many people I’m in touch with that I knew in Aspen. Cherie pulled a lot of things out of New York through Nathan Lyons, so that created a whole new mixture, an intellectual front that Aspen does not have usually, other than the Aspen Design Conference and those kind of things. It was just a perfect storm of ideas.
END
Note: This interview was compiled from a phone interview with Peter de Lory conducted by the author on November 21, 2017. Edited for length and clarity with Peter de Lory in May 2020. All images courtesy/copyright Peter de Lory.
The Colorado Photo History blog is the online presence for “Outside Influence,” a book project by Rupert Jenkins. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion for future posts, and visit @coloradophotohistory on Instagram.
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