Peter Miller (Photographer Of The Week)

 

Peter Miller- January 6th, 1934- April 17th, 2023 (Age 89)

Biography

Early Life:

Peter Miller was Born in New York City on January 6th, 1934. Miller moved to Vermont at 13 and quickly fell in love with his new home, the rolling hills and farm lands offering endless opportunity for exploration. "My father and mother would fight; I'd be in the woods making friends with the animals, or just walking around," he stated in an interview. Miller bought his first camera using $160 that he received from an insurance company after someone stole some guns of his.

Turning Point:

As a student at the University of Toronto, he met the famous portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh and traveled to Europe as his assistant, helping out on photo shoots of notable figures including Pablo Picasso, Albert Camus and John Steinbeck. Miller enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduating from the Canadian college and spent two years working as a Signal Corps photographer in Paris, roaming the streets with his camera. He then wrote for Life magazine in the late 1950's before returning to Vermont and settling in Stowe. (Miller, who had two daughters, later moved to Waterbury after he and his wife divorced; he never remarried). For the next three decades, Miller befriended and photographed Vermonters who represented a disappearing way of life: hill farmers, country store owners, deer and woodchuck hunters, sugar makers, lumberjacks, auctioneers, barbers, fiddlers, coopers. "Simple people living simple lives," he would later say.

Miller had an affinity for landscape photography, too, and could often be found chasing sunsets across the countryside. "It isn't photography that I like so much," he stated.
"What I do like is beauty." But he often found beauty where others would see only bleakness, as in an undated photograph of a Fair-fax cornfield in late March, snow melting into mud under threatening clouds. A second mud-season photograph captures a bygone world: a distant view of a sugar maker driving a pair of horses and a sledge across a dark, snow-striped field.

In 2015, he started renting out several rooms in his Waterbury house through Airbnb, a short-lived venture that helped sustain him for a while but also seemed to deepen his frustration with his changing home state.

"I am tired of being a chamber maid for my Airbnb clients and spending whatever I make for taxes, heating, electricity and vacations for bureaucrats," he wrote in a 2016 blog post titled, "All I Want to do is Write and Take Photographs." Finally, with the encouragement of his two daughters, Miller sold his home late last year and moved into a Stowe apartment building for seniors. 

He struggled with the transition. The tiny apartment, which he referred to as his "prison cell," could not accommodate all of his prints and photography gear. And though the buyer of his house allowed him to maintain a workshop space, his worsening health made the 15-minute drive prohibitive. "My mind is a lot younger, and that's a problem," he stated.

Miller became depressed during this time. Worried that he might never recover if he didn't occupy his mind, he took up an unexpected hobby: ice cream making. It proved to be a great healing device, he said, bringing back memories of childhood, "churning the bucket and licking the spoon."

I really enjoy this photo because of how it can symbolize hard work and the true pain throughout a lifetime of pain. Within the palm of the hands to me it represents darkness or a broken family line. I say this since each little crack is like a moment through time. The hard the moment, the deeper the cut is for you to not only overcome but also hide away. 

Death:

Millers death, confirmed by his longtime friend Rob Hunter, followed a hospitalization for pneumonia. Hunter grew close with Miller over the years and once even spent dozens of hours following him around while producing a documentary film series about some of Frog Hollow's artists. The two had fallen out of touch during the pandemic but recently reconnected, with Hunter visiting Miller numerous times before his death.

After learning of Miller's passing, Hunter searched his own computer for the raw footage he shot of his friend and sat down to watch. Yet he was not the only one. Millions of fans of Peter Miller gathered around as a tribute to the late photographer. 

Conclusion:

Millers work could be argued to be the basis of modern photojournalism. His photography was always shot in back and white throughout his career, with careful consideration for light. But Miller took photos of moments when he could, prioritizing the subject material over the subjects condition. Miller will forever go down in history as a great photographer. 

Sources:

 https://www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture/peter-miller-who-photographed-vermonts-simple-people-living-simple-lives-dies-at-89-38094222

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/news/peter-miller-iconic-vermont-photographer-dies-at-89-38057739