Peter VANDERWARKER in The Arts Fuse

July 1, 2025
by Mark Faverman

Over five decades, internationally regarded photographer Peter Vanderwarker has illustrated, through his camera, stories about our built environment. His enchanting photos have caught the essence of numerous award-winning architectural projects. Raised in Connecticut, he earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of California Berkeley and became a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is the author of seven books about Boston’s history, architecture, and man-made structures and spaces..

Reflecting his own affable and winning personality, Vanderwarker’s precise, yet warmly articulated pictures are in many collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Addison Gallery of American Art, the Boston Athenaeum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the MIT Museum, and Harvard’s GSD. He has been honored by the American Institute of Architects.

Through his ability to capture, in his images, character, strength, and presence, Vanderwarker has earned a reputation as a preeminent architectural photographer of iconic structures. His photos evoke Boston’s past and present while promising to inspire its future. Introduced to photography as a student at Phillips Academy, Vanderwarker knew early on he wanted to be a photographer. His practical father lovingly told him that he shouldn’t throw away his life to serve that dream. So Peter initially studied architecture. After three rather miserable years in a firm, Vanderwarker worked on anti-war movies and taught architectural design. At the age of 30 he started photographing buildings. Nearly starving (his words), he shot whatever architectural jobs he could get. Because of his teaching, he eventually networked with a lot of local architects, who helped him find work.

A fortuitous meeting with Boston Public Library’s Photographic and Print Curator Sinclair Hitchings led to a collaboration that resulted in the book Boston, Then and Now. He asked the late Robert Campbell, Boston Globe architecture critic, to write the volume’s foreward. This led to their long-running collaboration in “The Boston Globe Magazine” — “Cityscapes of Boston.” In the feature, Vanderwarker’s photos were paired with Campbell’s texts.

Vanderwarker’s work is inevitably about teaching. Viewers can always learn something from his photos, especially if they look carefully at their details, contrasts, and perspectives. These pictures reflect the vivacious personality of their creator; they express a forthright exuberance and charm. So, while there are lessons to be learned, they also celebrate form, color, and material relationships in both the built and natural environments. They inspire joy.

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