Peter Brown

Controlled Burn, High Island, Texas

1988

Peter Brown has photographed the open landscape and small towns of the High Plains for the past thirty years. He lives in Houston with his wife Jill Fryar. He often collaborates with writers and is the author of Seasons of Light, with Denise Levertov, On The Plains, with Kathleen Norris, West of Last Chance with Kent Haruf, Habiter L’Ouest with John Brinckerhoff Jackson and Hometown Texas, with Joe Holley. An English language version of Habiter L’Ouest, (To Live in the West) will be published in 2019. His work has been collected by and exhibited in a variety of museums including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, The Amon Carter Museum, the Stanford Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art among others. He has been the recipient of an Individual Artist's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award, the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, the Imogen Cunningham Award, and grants from the Graham Foundation and the Arts Alliance of Houston. Brown’s photography and writing have appeared in many journals, including Harpers, DoubleTake, Life, PDN, The New Yorker, Aperture, American Photographer, Texas Monthly, 5280, The New York Times Magazine and SPOT. He has a BA in English and an MFA in Art from Stanford University and has taught at both Stanford and at Rice where he now teaches at the Glasscock School. He was named Photographer/Educator of the year by Houston Center for Photography and was awarded the inaugural Glasscock School Teaching Prize. An art gallery at the Glasscock School was created and named in his honor in 2014. He is a founding member of Houston Center for Photography, where he serves on the Advisory Council, and has served on the Art Board of FotoFest and the Hirsch Library Board at the MFAH. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the Glasscock School. November 3, 2008 was declared ”Peter Brown Day” by the mayor of Houston in recognition of his service to the arts.