Peter Turnley – December 5th-7th, 2025 – Los Angeles

INSTRUCTOR

Peter Turnley is renowned for his photography of the realities of the human condition. His photographs have been featured on the cover of Newsweek forty-three times and are published frequently in many of the world’s most prestigious publications. He has worked in over ninety countries and has witnessed most major stories of international geopolitical and historic significance in the last forty years. He has both American and French nationality,  

Turnley has photographed most of the world’s conflicts, including the Gulf War of 1991, the Balkans (Bosnia), Somalia, Rwanda, South Africa, Chechnya, Haiti, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the 2003 war in Iraq. He has produced portraits and covered many of the modern world’s most influential people: Obama, Castro, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Mandela, Arafat, Schroeder, Ceausescu, Gaddafi, Chirac, Clinton, Reagan, Bush Sr., Lady Diana, and Pope Jean Paul II among others. 

Since 1975 Turnley has also continually photographed the life of Paris, his adopted home. He was born in the U.S. but has lived more than half his life in Paris, where he worked as the assistant to the photographer Robert Doisneau in his early days in Paris in 1981.

Turnley has photographed extensively the life of Cuba since 1989 and has published a book Cuba: A Grace of Spirit. 

His photographs have been exhibited worldwide, including a major retrospective:

“Moments of the Human Condition” at Cuba’s most important museum, “Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes”. Turnley was the first American artist since the Cuban Revolution to have a major retrospective exhibit at Cuba’s most important museum. 

His photographs have been exhibited internationally and his signed fine art prints are collected worldwide. His photographs have been exhibited at: Weatherhead Gallery, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, 2009; Agathe Gaillard Galerie, Paris, 2012; Leica Gallery-Salzburg, Austria, 2013;  Leica Gallery-Los Angeles, 2014; Leica Gallery-San Francisco, 2014; 

Muséo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, 2015 ; Leica Gallery-New York, 2016;

Leica Gallery-Miami, 2014 and 2016, Leica Gallery, Seattle, 2017, Fototeca de Cuba, Havana, Cuba, 2019; “Visa Pour l’Image”, Perpignan, France. 2020;  La Gacilly Photo Festival, 2023; L’Hotel de Ville Paris, 2023 .

A graduate of the University of Michigan, the Sorbonne of Paris, and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris, Turnley has received honorary doctorate degrees from the New School of Social Research in New York, Ohio Wesleyan University and St. Francis College of Indiana. He received a Nieman Fellowship from Harvard for the academic year 2000–2001.

Among the many international awards Turnley has won are the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, numerous awards and citations from World Press Photo, and the University of Missouri’s Pictures of the Year competition. Peter Turnley was nominated for the top prize in the most important international photojournalism festival, “Visa Pour l’Image” in Perpignan, France in Sept. 2020. 

Turnley lives in Paris and has published eight books: Beijing Spring, Moments of Revolution, In Times of War and Peace, Parisians, McClellan Street, French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, Cuba: A Grace of Spirit,, A New York-Paris Visual Diary: The Human Face of Covid-19,and The Other California-197 which  can be purchased only on his website:www.peterturnley.com

His new book, “Paris   Je t’aime-50 Years of Photographs” will be available on his website: www.peterturnley.com     in early August, 2025. 

http://www.peterturnley.com