Photography & Imaging

Biography

Peter Lucas has taught at Columbia University as a lecturer of peace education in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, at The New School, Bogazici University, and Istanbul University.  His research and teaching focuses on international studies in human rights, human rights and photography, human rights and media, the poetics of witnessing, peace education, and human rights education and documentary practice.  His current projects include a study of seven photojournalists for the Rio-based web portal, Viva Favela.  His book, Viva Favela: Photojournalism, Visual Inclusion, and Human Rights in Brazil is forthcoming.  As a photographer and collector, Peter Lucas focuses on family photography and found photography.  He has exhibited in several galleries in New York. His current projects include The Last Hour of Summer, an exhibition and book of 200 small black and white photographs found in a Rio flea market of women on the beach in the summer of 1963. The project traces the ephemeral beauty and saudade of Rio in the last days before the military coup in 1964 and the last summer before the widespread introduction of Kodacolor film. In 2007 this project will be exhibited at the prestigious photography museum, Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio.  Peter’s own photo projects include The Melancholy of Summer, an ongoing portfolio of original photos recalling the era of small Kodacolor snapshots from the 1960s. The subject of the portfolio is children and the beach with the mood evoking the end of a summer’s day, the last day of summer, and the end of childhood.