Peter Brown lives in Houston with his wife Jill Fryar and their daughter Caitlin. He attended Stanford University (BA English, MFA Photography) and has taught in the art departments at Rice and at Stanford. He now teaches at the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice. He has exhibited and published his work widely.
Peter Brown's photographic awards include the Dorothea Lange – Paul Taylor Prize (with Kent Haruf) from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; an Alfred Eisenstaedt Award from Columbia University and LIFE magazine for a photo-essay published in DoubleTake; an Imogen Cunningham Award for his portfolio Seasons of Light; a graduate fellowship from the Carnegie Foundation; an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; an Artist’s Grant from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and a publication grant from the Graham Foundation. He was named Photographer/Educator of the Year by the Houston Center for Photography in 2004 and was awarded the first Rice University Glasscock School Teaching Prize in 2007. His book On the Plains received the Fred Whitehead Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. In recognition of his work in the Houston community, Mayor Bill White proclaimed November 3rd, 2007 “Peter Brown Day”.
Peter Brown's collaborative book on the High Plains with Kent Haruf, West of Last Chance, was published by W.W. Norton in January of 2008 and has been excerpted in Harpers, 5280, PhotoIcon and PDN.
He presently is photographing the Llano Estacado of Texas and New Mexico under a grant from the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University.
Peter Brown's photographs are in many public, private, university and corporate collections, including those of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection in Houston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Stanford University Museum of Art, the Rice University Collection, The Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas Austin, the Sheldon Museum at the University of Nebraska, the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas, the Snipe Museum at Notre Dame, and the University of Kentucky Museum of Art, among many others. His work has been exhibited in one man and group shows in museums and galleries in this country and abroad. Among others: The Museum of Modern Art in New York; The Museum of Fine Arts and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
His first book Seasons of Light, consisted of photographs of interior scenes with Brown’s short prose pieces, and was published with an afterword and poetry by Denise Levertov by Rice University Press in 1988. It was excerpted in American Photographer. His second, On The Plains, dealt with the open landscape and small towns of the western plains. Published with an introduction by Kathleen Norris by W.W. Norton, photographs from On the Plains were also published in DoubleTake, LIFE, The New Yorker, Aperture and Texas Monthly. Brown’s work has appeared in Dwell, House and Garden, Photo District News (PDN), Landscape Architecture, Duke, Stanford, Popular Photography, PhotoIcon, American Photographer, FotoMetro, Southwest Art, American Cowboy and other magazines - and on the covers of books by Annie Proulx, Jane Smiley, Kent Haruf, Denise Levertov and Susan Wood.
In Houston, he is on the Advisory Board of The Houston Center for Photography, and the Art Board of Fotofest. He teaches at and is on the Board of the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice University.
Brown’s work may be seen at Sandy Carson Gallery in Denver, Harris Gallery in Houston, Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles, Stephen Clark Gallery in Austin, Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, PDNB Gallery in Dallas and Highland Gallery, in Marfa, Texas.
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