Pete Turner (photographer)


Donald Peter Turner was an American photographer.
In 1986, Turner published his first monograph, Pete Turner Photographs. His second book, Pete Turner African Journey, documents Turner's many adventures in Africa, beginning with his trek in 1959 from Cape Town to Cairo with Wally Byam's famous Airstream caravan. The Color of Jazz is a comprehensive collection of his provocative album covers for CTI Records among many others.

Life and work

Critic A. D. Coleman described the work of Turner as having "A dramatist's sense of event, intense and saturated coloration, and a distinct if indescribable otherness are omnipresent in Turner's images".
He graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1956 along with classmates Bruce Davidson and Jerry Uelsmann.
Photo District News voted him as one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time and in 1981 the American Society of Media Photographers awarded him its Outstanding Achievement in Photography honor.
His photographs are in the permanent collections of many major museums, including the Paris Foreign Missions Society, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and International Center of Photography in New York. The George Eastman House in Rochester is the depository of Turner's life's work and where his retrospective exhibit, "Pete Turner: Empowered by Color", opened in 2007.
Turner died September 18, 2017, at his home on Long Island, New York.

Contributions to LP covers