[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 166 (Wednesday, November 20, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8352-S8353]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO PETER MILLER
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, for generations, Vermonters have
contributed to our national culture, through art, music, film and
prose. Peter Miller is one such artist whose impressive work throughout
his life as both a photographer and author has showcased Vermont and
its residents and enriching us all.
As an amateur photographer, I have followed Peter's work for decades
with admiration. From his early beginnings as a U.S. Army photographer
to his travels across Europe with Yousuf Karsh, he has channeled his
passion and energy into a remarkable art. Over the past 20 years, his
unique ability to capture the Vermont spirit has been well documented
and his consistent approach to producing authentic depictions of the
Vermont way of life is unparalleled. He shuns the commercialization of
art and instead creates his work solely to share and promote the values
of our small and community-based State. This attitude was evident more
than ever when, being honored as the Burlington Free Press ``Vermonter
of the Year'' in 2006 for his book ``Vermont Gathering Places,'' he
frankly said ``I don't shoot for galleries. I shoot for myself and the
people I photograph.''
His appreciation and respect for the traditional culture that defines
Vermont is readily evident in his work. He has photographed farm-dotted
landscapes, village communities, and generations of Vermont families.
When writing the forward to his 2003 book ``Vermont People,'' I noted
that ``the Vermont faces in this book speak worlds about living in the
State that gave them character, wrinkles and wisdom . . . through their
faces, you can see Vermont.'' Peter's most recent work, ``A Lifetime of
Vermont People,'' is another testament to his tenacity and tact as a
Vermonter. A product of over a year's worth of photography,
fundraising, and self-publishing, this
[[Page S8353]]
book is truly a labor of love. His addition of background stories helps
provide greater insight and meaning to the photographs included and
through his photography and the recent addition of writing to his
repertoire, he gives a face, and a voice, to Vermonters.
Peter lives the lifestyle he captures in his photography. A Vermonter
for over five decades, he has embraced the way of life that makes the
State so special. Like his black and white photographs that draw focus
squarely on the subject of the piece, rather than relying on flashy
colors to convey a message, he is not interested in glitz and glam. His
books have themes that exemplify Vermont: farm women, gathering places,
small communities. He laments the waning of iconic farms, the erosion
of small town values, and the fading of the once impermeable Vermont
way of life. His resiliency is remarkable and his uncanny ability to
display the beauty of Vermont in a way words cannot do justice serves
as an inspiration for photographers everywhere. I ask unanimous consent
that an article in the VT Digger that highlights the lifetime of
accomplishments of this extraordinary man be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From VT Digger, Nov. 10, 2013]
In This State: For photographer Peter Miller, a Wonderful Life in Black
and White, and a Future Colored with Gray
Photographer Peter Miller has spent a lifetime seeing the
world in black and white while portraying it in all its
colors, both with his pictures and writing.
It's a mysterious gift that has blessed him with a
distinguished, adventurous career that spans close to 60
years. His latest book, ``A Lifetime of Vermont People,'' is
a 208-page paean to the art of black and white portraiture,
capturing not only remarkable faces and places, but through
sheer passage of time, vanished landscapes and passing eras
in the Green Mountains.
Published in June, the cloth-bound coffee-table book and
its impeccably printed photos should be the capstone of his
illustrious life. But as he wanders closer to the threshold
of 80, Miller acutely feels part of a vanishing era himself,
his view of the world not unlike an old snapshot: a bit faded
and worn, its luster dimmed by the years.
After putting his heart and soul and significant money into
his latest book, he honestly admits he's at loose ends:
filled with ideas, beset with projects left to do, wondering
how he's going to find energy to do them, let alone pay for
them. ``Lifetime,'' for all its striking portraits, just
about killed him. It sapped his strength, and if you talk
with him a while, you sense, some of his spirit.
``Sitting behind that computer for a year, seven days a
week, finished me. I had a lot of stress. I put on weight. My
right leg swelled up because I was in the same position, and
I could hardly walk,'' he says. He also had to raise the
money to self-publish and print 2,500 copies of the book,
using his own funds and a Kickstarter campaign.
``I ended up with $2,000 to my name, and I said to myself,
`I'm getting awfully close to the edge','' he says.
Having put some distance between the book's release and
having sold around 1,000 copies, he can now breathe a little
easier and look back on the past 18 months with a sense of
perspective.
``I'm not depressed about life,'' he says, but there's no
doubt he feels things have changed in ways he doesn't like
and doesn't respect--Ben & Jerry's, gentrification, Stowe-
style luxe tourism and massive trophy houses are ripe topics,
for starters.
In looking askance at change, Miller is not unlike many
others whose life trajectory has spanned 79 years. But it
seems particularly poignant irony that after six decades of
exceptional artistry, painting lives in film and then digital
pixels, he's come to feel as much a historical artifact as
his portrait subjects--trappers, farmers, hunters, lawmakers,
auctioneers, iconic Vermonters all--who have now passed on.
What chafes most is that his old life, where you could make
a living as a ``stock'' photographer selling your work, is no
longer possible. People tell him his photos are in calendars
and are even used as screensavers in Russia, yet he never
sees a penny. He is miffed at markets that have vanished.
Recalling an interview request with the Associated Press, he
told them, ``I don't know if I want to talk to you people,
all you do is steal stuff.''
It's tempting to wield the label curmudgeon after talking
with Miller, but if you listen a little harder, more likely
words like honest, opinionated, frustrated and baffled come
to mind.
``All these things are being taken, and frankly, I don't
know how to make a living,'' he explains.
He was raised in Weston, where his passion for photography
blossomed in 1950 as a 17-year-old, when he started capturing
the way of life he saw around him. After school at Burr &
Burton and college in Toronto, he became a carefree U.S. Army
photographer, footloose in Paris with a 35mm Leica, a
Rolleiflex twin-lens camera, and a young man's energy and
budding sharp eye. Then came travels across Europe in the
mid-1950s as the set-up man for famed Canadian photographer
Yousuf Karsh, meeting people like Pablo Casals, Picasso, Pope
John XXIII, Christian Dior, and Albert Schweitzer, soaking up
culture and the good life with food and wine.
Wanting to write, he then had a dream stint as a reporter
for Life magazine, but disliked the constraints of corporate
life--he's kind of a ``loner,'' he admits--and struck out on
his own path. It took him all over Vermont and America,
producing acclaimed books such as ``People of the Great
Plains,'' and ``Vermont People,'' which was rejected by 13
publishers. So he took a radical, then almost unheard of step
and self-published it in 1990. It eventually sold 15,000
copies.
His ``Lifetime of Vermont People'' expands on the idea,
with 211 photos and 60 profiles of ordinary and extraordinary
Vermonters.
Why use black and white?
``I think you can get inside a person more in black and
white,'' he explains, saying it's more abstract. and not
having a color background distracts less. His talent in
distilling the essence of a person in a photo is something
that he still doesn't completely understand, along with where
his ``drive'' and persistence comes from. He does know he
doesn't just shoot, but ``visits'' with people, putting them
at ease, which is something he learned from his mentor,
Karsh.
``I don't quite understand the whole process,'' he admits,
calling it ``something magical.'' Miller is gracious and full
of tales as he ambles about the second floor of his pale
yellow, rambling, much-bigger-than-he-needs and way-too-
trafficked house. It's in Colbyville, a Route 100 hamlet
swallowed up and masticated into something indistinguishable
by the voracious maw of tourism development at the I-89
interchange in Waterbury. What got lost animates ``Nothing
Hardly Every Happens in Colbyville, Vermont,'' a book of
essays that riffs with trenchant humor on bird hunting,
tourism and life before and after the Ben & Jerry's ice cream
theme park up the street.
The smell of smoke from two wood stoves permeates the
slope-roofed rooms as he shows a visitor around his house,
its walls rich with photos he's taken and art--especially
paintings and sculptures of woodcock, a bird he loves to
hunt. Are they good to eat? Oh yes, wonderful, he says.
With a ruddy square face younger than his years, a still-
full mop of white hair and small round eyeglasses that gives
him a look of constant curiosity, Miller moves more
cautiously than the vigorous outdoorsman he once was.
``I went out bird hunting yesterday,'' he says. ``I was
slow, man. I wasn't too stable in the woods.''
A self-admitted ``loner'' with two daughters (in England
and Peru) from a former marriage, he lives by himself moving
between an airy studio, a bedroom, small office, living room
and kitchen. Downstairs is a little-visited gallery and
sparsely heated shipping room stacked with boxes that hold
just under 1,400 copies of his latest book.
``I hope to sell a lot over Christmas,'' he says, noting he
still has a living to make. Despite the ordeal of his last
book, he has more he wants to do, like an exhibit or book of
photos he took in the 1950s of Margaux, France, in the famed
Bordeaux wine region.
That period, that landscape, he says, ``is completely gone
now.'' But he wonders if he can find the time and energy and
if there is a market for the photos. After a lifetime of
black and white, life seems to offer only a lot of gray
areas.
``I don't know what I am anymore,'' he says.
____________________