Peter de Lory

Peter de Lory is a Seattle-based photographer and works most frequently in black and white, creating images that formally and symbolically invite viewers to plumb their own memories and experiences for meaning. Long interested in the history and literature of the American West, he explores the intersection of the natural landscape and human presence, recording through visual metaphor our ideological and physical footprint on the land.

During his long career, de Lory has traveled through out the western United States, unearthing its mythologies, following the passage of early explorers and settlers, revealing Native American traces, documenting iconic Western topography from the desert, to forest floors, waterfalls and mountain tops to rangeland. His works for Sound Transit and the Seattle Water Department (now Seattle Public Utilities) show his versatility in dramatizing the urban environment.

De Lory has exhibited frequently at museums and other institutions throughout the United States, Japan, and Canada since 1977. Early in his career he was assistant to the late legendary American photographer, Minor White. He received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Western States Arts Foundation. From 1979 to 1995, de Lory lectured at numerous Colleges, Universities, and other institutions nationally, and his work appeared in the publications Aperture and Camerawork.

The artist’s photographs are included in such museum collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, The Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, the Smithsonian, Seattle Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the Fogg Museum at Harvard and in many university and corporate collections. His public art projects appear at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Wenatchee Convention Center, and Longfellow Creek Trail in Seattle.