A Lifetime of Vermont People | Featured Photographer Peter Miller

Peter Miller is a writer and photographer who lives in Colbyville, Vermont in a rambling farmhouse on Route 100 adjacent to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream plant. He is Vermont’s best-known photographer because of his iconic books, the recently published A Lifetime of Vermont People, the classic Vermont People, published in 1990, and Vermont Farm Women. Peter and his family moved to Weston, Vermont in 1947. Miller graduated from Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester and received an AB in literature from the University of Toronto. There he met the famous portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh and became his assistant as he photographed the leading intellectuals and artists living in Europe, including Picasso, Schweitzer, Steinbeck, Camus, Augustus John and others. He enlisted in the US Army and was assigned to Paris as a Signal Corps photographer. In his off time he became a street photographer. Forty years later Random House published these photos and a memoir in The First Time I Saw Paris. In 1959 Peter joined LIFE Magazine as a reporter. He considered the job as an apprenticeship to learn reporting, writing and layout. After he had a few bylines he resigned and moved back to Vermont in 1964 and worked as a freelance photographer and writer. Vermont People was his first book about his home state and he self published it under the name of Silver Print Press. It sold 15,000 copies. He then published Vermont Farm Women in 2000 and Nothing Hardly Ever Happens in Colbyville, Vermont in 2006. Peter’s interest is to convey a sense of place—the history of a region—through the people. His photographs of people are intimate. His writing is terse and reflects careful research and interviews. His books are a document of our culture. The following slideshow represent a small selection of photographs from his latest book which was published in the summer of 2013, A Lifetime of Vermont People. In it are profiles and photographs of 60 Vermonters the author has recorded over the past 63 years. It is recognized as a seminal book on rural Vermonters. Some call these Vermonters a “Vanishing Species”.