Pedro Guerrero: A PhotographerÆs Journey with Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Calder, and Louise Nevelson by Guerrero Pedro, Pedro Guerrero

From the Publisher

Pedro Guerrero spent his entire career, more than 60 years, photographing houses of some of the most illustrious American architects and artists of the twentieth century. Emerging from a modest background, his first professional job at the age of twenty-two in 1939 was photographing Taliesin West, the Arizona home of Frank Lloyd Wright. For the next 20 years, Guerrero was the chief visual interpreter of Wright's homes. Guerrero was soon photographing houses belonging to such legendary artists and architects as Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Marcel Breuer, John Huston, Philip Johnson, Julia Child, Edward Stone, and Alexi Brodovitch.

Spanning nearly a century, Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer's Journey is a fascinating memoir illustrated with over 190 of the author's own photographs. Guerrero steps out from behind the camera and, for the first time, tells his own story along with the stories of the contradictory and complex lives of the extraordinary people he has known, including candid anecdotes about the personal quirks of some of America's legendary magazine editors, architects, and artists.

Publishers Weekly

A careful hybrid of art monograph and anecdotal autobiography, this compilation places the recollections of Guerrero, who was Frank Lloyd Wright's on-call photographer for 20 years, in direct relation to his body of work. As a result, the book largely documents the lives and works of three prominent personalities of art and architecture-Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. Guerrero's work occupies an odd zone, more compositionally purposeful than documentary photography but without the ideology or invention that suggests an ambition toward high art, like many architectural photographers of his generation. Guerrero shows deep devotion to his subjects, but his respect sometimes comes across as adulation. Many photographs look as if they were composed for the subject's approval rather than to record a spontaneous moment. As a portraitist, he never seems to catch his subject off-guard. A seasoned storyteller with a keen appreciation for the punch line, Guerrero relates anecdotes of his encounters with celebrities with a youthful excitement and conversational ease. The stories work best when paired directly with photographs and the lengthy captions are often the most engaging. The chapters about Guerrero's childhood and family that open and close the book are inspirational, but feel out of place among the outsize personalities of Wright, Calder and Nevelson. (Mar.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Karen MacMurray - Library Journal

Mexican American photographer Guerrero, whose long career spanned 60 years, stumbled upon his first professional job in 1939 when he photographed Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West. Since then, his work has been featured in several major publications, including House and Garden, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and House Beautiful. Through 190 black-and-white and color photographs, this book documents his life and journey. It also provides an intimate look into the lives of those he photographed and came to know personally: Frank Lloyd Wright and sculptors Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. As the collection shows, Guerrero was a master at capturing the nuances of his subjects. His images are executed with technical skill and reveal the character of larger-than-life figures who are less known for their personality than the work they left behind. And therein lies the true value of this book. Recommended for large collections.

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