Peter Moriarty 

American born 1952 

Peter Moriarty's photographs have been exhibited and collected throughout the United States since 1975. Moriarty's work is currently in numerous collections, including: Addison Gallery of American Art, Eastman Museum, Davison Art Center, Hood Museum of Art , J. Brooks Buxton, Mt. Holyoke College Art Museum, Museo d’Arte Sao Paulo, Brasil, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery and the Worcester Art Museum. 

In 1977, after completing his MFA thesis at Rochester Institute of Technology about his then mentor, Lotte Jacobi, toured for two years with a grant from the NHCA.

His photograph series, Rural Systems: Photographs from Lamoille County Vermont (1978) was shown at Middlebury College with funds from the VCA and professional development from the VSC. With the aid of the NEA, this series was shown at the Eastman Museum. Comprised of silver prints, these photographs became part of a group show, New England Perambulations, that originated at the Addison Gallery of American Art and subsequently toured with a catalog via the assistance of the Polaroid Corporation and NEFA.

The Hurt Dance: Photographs of Endurance Athletes (1986) was exhibited at the Fogg Museum, MIT, Dartmouth College and the Fleming Museum, among other venues. This work is included in Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like (Random House 2003), which originated at the Smithsonian Institution before a SITES tour of seventeen US cities. David Godine's Lotte Jacobi Photographs (Boston, MA 2003) included both an introduction and notes by Moriarty.

Moriarty's series of photographs, Warm Room: Photographs from Historic Greenhouses will be published by VeronaLibri in 2019. Peter maintains a studio in Clinton, MA. Since 2015, his photographs have been represented by Anni Mackay at Bigtown Gallery in Rochester, Vermont. 

SELECTION FROM, Hot Houses, Warm Curves, exhibition at BigTown Gallery Photographs of 18th & 19th century greenhouses from around the world.

Warm Room (Japanese for greenhouse) is a unique portfolio of 56 gelatin-silver prints of the distinctive 18th and 19th century greenhouses of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Berkeley, London, Chatsworth, Belgium and France. These Orangeries, Greenhouses, Warm Rooms, Limonaia, Conservatories, Serres, Aboretum, or Glass Houses, as they are known in their respective countries, were built to preserve plant specimens gathered by world explorers; to extend the life of citrus fruit, to advance the medicinal uses of plants, and to propagate grape vines for export. Taken over a period of twenty years starting in 1990's when the artist lived close to the Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay, Long Island the project is on-going. Influenced by early 20th century artists, mainly Alfred Stieglitz and his circle, Peter Moriarty's work reflects a similar focus for appreciating the subject in its natural environment. In this portfolio he freely explores the interaction of forms in the light-saturated architecture to reveal an exotic and atmospheric mutability rather than an exact replication of these iconic structures. The graphic strength of this exquisite sequence of photographs lies in how it highlights the uniform quality of purpose and significance entwined in the greenhouse endeavor. Rarely has there been a more photogenic subject matter.

It has been suggested that these are photographs of opportunity for they are a record of the artist's life as he moves from one side of the country to the other visiting his daughters, one in law school in Chicago at the time, the other dancing in Berkeley. They are surely that, but they differ in their frank deliberation, a contemplative quality, less “street” in nature. Botanists share their collective knowledge, and just so, conservatories take on and reflect similar explorations and functional elaborations, especially as seen in their architecture, around the world; in 2010, Moriarty received a travel grant so that he could document European counterparts to the sister institutions he'd been photographing in America. He planned his six week itinerary prepared by the advice received from the NY Botanical Garden's, Mertz Library staff. Thus informed, Moriarty selected camera equipment that was light, nimble and efficient, heading out with a hand-held flash and Leica camera. With these, he captured some of the many rare and protected splendors of the conservatories of Europe, not frequently investigated in a continuous project of this kind. The portfolio is comprised of real photographs; taken with film; printed in a traditional darkroom. Gelatin-silver prints are technologically contemporaneous and in keeping with the coming of age of both the greenhouse and the camera.