[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.

                          ____________________