F I R S T C L A S S
TRAVEL TOOLS, GREAT GADGETS & COOL STUFF TOD D O
Pedro Guerrero photographed art world
luminaries ranging
from Alexander
Calder and Louise
Nevelson to Frank
Lloyd Wright (above
with Guerrero).
Golden Eye
A photographer’s journey across the 20th century
Contributors
include Abigail
Green, Shannon
McKenna, Scott
Steinberg and
Allison Thomas.
He walked along Fifth Avenue
with Frank Lloyd Wright, shared
cocktails with Alexander Calder
and drank tea with Louise Nev-
elson. Now, Princeton Architec-
tural 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 signifi-
cant,” Guerrero says. “But Mr.
Wright saw promise in me and
offered me a job. … It changed
my life forever.”
In 1939, at age 22, Guer-
rero left art school in Los An-
geles and returned home to
Arizona. There, on a lark, he
drove to Taliesin West, Frank
Lloyd Wright’s desert home and
laboratory. He showed the great
architect his student portfolio—
including a few nudes he had
shot on a Malibu beach—and
asked for a job. He got one, and
Guerrero photographed Wright
and many of his projects until
Wright’s death in 1959.
Over the next four decades,
Guerrero captured some of
the greatest architecture and
interiors of the day, shooting
for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and
The New York Times Magazine,
among other top publications.
Guerrero, who lived in New
York City and Connecticut for
50 years, also photographed
the homes of chef/author
Julia Child and filmmaker
John Huston, as well as the
New Canaan, Conn., creations
of several midcentury moderns,
including Marcel Breuer, Edward
Durell Stone and Philip Johnson.
In A Photographer’s Journey,
Guerrero, now 89 years old,
writes of his early life as a Latino
in the Southwest, his service
in the U.S. Army during World
War II and the brilliant career
that has spanned 60 years. This
poignant work includes more
than 190 of Guerrero’s own
photographs, documenting
a most significant life.
