(Los Angeles) Edward Cella is pleased to announce a special exhibition of the photographs of Pedro E. Guerrero. Presented in conjunction with the national television debut of documentary American Masters: Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer’s Journey on PBS, the exhibition will present a focused selection of the photography’s most iconic images.
Born in 1917 in Casa Grande, Arizona, Guerrero attended Art Center School in Los Angeles and shortly thereafter became one of the principal photographers for Frank Lloyd Wright. Over his seven-decade-long career, Guerrero photographed buildings by many of America’s most important modern architects, including, Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Edward Durell Stone, and Eero Saarinen. Guerrero’s photographs have appeared in countless American and foreign magazines including the New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Architectural Record and House and Garden. He has also contributed photographs to dozens of books on Wright in addition to publications on Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. Guerrero’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Guerrero died at the age of ninety-five in 2012.
The documentary, American Masters: Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer’s Journey premieres on Friday, September 18, 9-10 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings)
Discover the remarkable life and work of Pedro E. Guerrero, a Mexican American born and raised in segregated Mesa, Arizona, who had an extraordinary, international photography career. Using Guerrero’s words and images, the program explores his collaborations with three of the most iconic American artists of the 20th century: Frank Lloyd Wright and sculptors Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. This film is a special co-presentation with VOCES.
What does it take for a 22-year-old art school drop-out to start a lifelong professional relationship with “the greatest American architect of all time”? Originally published by Curbed as “How a 22-Year-Old Became Wright’s Trusted Photographer,” this article reveals that for Pedro E. Guerrero, it took some guts and a lot of luck – but once they were working together this unlikely pairing was a perfect match.
When Frank Lloyd Wright hired Pedro E. Guerrero to photograph Taliesin West in 1939, neither knew it would lead to one of the most important relationships in architectural history. Wright was 72 and had already been on the cover of Time for Fallingwater. Guerrero was a 22-year-old art school drop-out. Their first meeting was prompted by Guerrero’s father, a sign painter who vaguely knew Wright from the neighborhood and hoped the architect would offer his son a job. Any job.
Read full article HERE.
I wrote the following essay a few years ago for a limited edition book of photographs by Pedro E. Guerrero, put out by Cattletrack Press in Scottsdale. The publication was designed to celebrate not only Guerrero’s scintillating talent, but also his improbable success as the son of a sign painter from Mesa, whose grandparents were Mexican immigrants. Born in Casa Grande in 1917, Guerrero still remembers the humiliating notices prohibiting Mexicans from using public swimming pools in his neighborhood.
Read full article HERE.
In 1939, in the dry, desert foothills of the McDowell Mountain Range of Scottsdale, Ariz., a young man asked an older man for a job. The young man, a 22-year-old named Pedro E. Guerrero, was trying to start a career as a photographer. The older man, at 72, was Frank Lloyd Wright. At the time, Guerrero lacked a degree in photography and was unaware of Wright's celebrity-architect status—he only knew that Wright was a man building a house in the desert (the house, of course, was Taliesin West). "I had no idea who this man was," he says. "If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have gone." It was perhaps this innocence that appealed to Wright and led to Guerrero's career as the architect's preferred photographer.
Read full article HERE.
Pedro E. Guerrero, one of the greatest photographers of 20th century, was born in 1917, which makes him somewhere around 95 years old. Which is another excellent reason that if you're anywhere near Los Angeles on April 5th, you make your way to LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), 6522 Hollywood Boulevard, where at 6:30 p.m., Pedro E. Guerrero is scheduled to talk about his work at the opening of a new exhibition, Pedro E. Guerrero: Photographs of Modern Life, which runs only through April 25th
Read full article HERE.
In 1939, twenty-two-year-old Pedro E. Guerrero, having impatiently bolted from his studies at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, was back in Mesa, Arizona, contemplating what to do next. His father, who had built a successful sign painting business, had once done a job for Frank Lloyd Wright, and remembered that the architect had a school "somewhere near Scottsdale. Maybe he needed a photographer?" The father went to the store where he had seen Wright buy paint, and got an address. A letter of inquiry was sent. "Yes," Wright responded. "Come any time."
Guerrero traveled to Scottsdale to find Wright in his driveway, saying goodbye to luncheon guests.
Read full article HERE.
He walked along Fifth Avenue with Frank Lloyd Wright, shared cocktails with Alexander Calder
and drank tea with Louise Nevelson. Now, Princeton Architectural Press publishes the story of photographer Pedro E. Guerrero, a Mexican-American who never thought the life he describes in his memoir, Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer’s Journey ($55), could happen to him. “Nothing in my background offered me hope that someday I would do something significant,” Guerrero says. “But Mr. Wright saw promise in me and offered me a job. … It changed my life forever.”
Read full article HERE.
Fans of American architecture will gather later this month at downtown's Millennium Biltmore for a conference dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright's work in Los Angeles. The five-day event features tours, lectures and a gala dinner to celebrate one of the world's most influential architects.
Likely overlooked in all of that, though, will be a man whose presence in Wright's story makes him a real-life counterpart to Woody Allen's cinematic chameleon, Leonard Zelig. His name is Pedro E. Guerrero, though friends call him Pete.
The photographer documented Wright and his work for two decades. He also chronicled the lives of art-world greats Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson, among others. And yet he remains a shadow figure who, at 88, looks back with surprise and gratitude on a career that enabled him to forge unlikely friendships with at least three of the 20th century's creative giants.
Read full article HERE.