Guerrero begins his memoir with the recognition that through luck, talent and naiveté he became a photographer and was able to work with three of America’s greatest artists: Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. Each had a distinctive personality that he tried to capture through his lens. All of them he considered to be his friends.
Through his photographs, Guerrero shows us his life. With his words he lets us into his life. He grew up in a racially segregated town in Arizona. While still young, he left for LA and by chance, took up photography in school but leaving before completing his degree. His father painted signs for Frank Lloyd Wright, and wrote to the architect to see if he needed a photographer. Wright responded in his characteristic way by saying: “Yes, come any time.” Thus started a lifelong admiration of and friendship with Frank Lloyd Wright. Guerrero recounts his time spent at Taliesin West and several interesting stories, including an afternoon of drinks with Wright, Phillip Johnson and himself at Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut. Guerrero felt an extreme sense of loyalty to Wright and goes so far as to state that when Wright died, he felt architecture dies with him.
After the time spent working with Wright, Guerrero explores the influences of working with Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson as well. Guerrero talks of photographing both and relates similarly interesting stories revealing the personalities of each artist. Calder, for example, felt it was a sin to purchase something that one could make themselves. Working with Louise Nevelson came at a particularly difficult time for Guerrero. His estranged wife, Bar dies in a house fire that consumed everything in Guerrero’s life at that point. He found refuge in working with Nevelson, whose work focused on found objects (which is why she considered herself the original recycler.)
Although Guerrero is writing about his life and we are given some personal glimpses into it—the book seems to be more focused on the three personalities that influenced him most. This book was an easy read and gives us insight into the four artists minds, including that of Pedro E. Guerrero (although that insight is only a small one, as Guerrero does not really tell us much of his personal life in the later years—only that of his father’s and a little of his mother’s.) Guerrero’s photographs are both iconic and personal and for him, it seems his work alone must matter. 60 years and more of photography and we only see a small sampling—but it works in the context of the book. In the end, it leaves me hungry to see more of the work of an artist who worked to know and photograph other artists.
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