Peter Ruprecht A Life in Motion
Peter Ruprecht
Photographer, digital strategist, former top-five US skier, Burning Man devotee. A life lived emphatically between disciplines, with a camera always in the bag.
I am drawn to people who refuse to pick one life. Peter Ruprecht has lived several at once. Argentine by birth, raised in Vermont, a top-five US skier at eighteen, a Dartmouth economist who passed through Merrill Lynch and, later, Marc Ecko. Somewhere in all of it, the thing that stuck was a camera. He photographs the way he lives, restlessly and honestly, chasing the spirit of a moment before it moves on.
Several Lives
Born in Buenos Aires in 1976, a descendant of the Argentine president Manuel Quintana, Peter had a taste for the wider world early. He took a degree in economics at Dartmouth, skied competitively into the US top five, and built a serious corporate career across Merrill Lynch, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and Blast Radius. Then, in 2001, a two-month journey through India produced the first frames that would quietly seed everything after. In 2004 he went back to Argentina and co-founded Forza Films, a documentary house that made work for Discovery and ESPN. By 2006 he was consulting for Opera Solutions and circling the globe with a camera, gathering his strongest body of work. In 2007 Marc Ecko hired him as Vice President of New Media and his personal photographer. And in 2009 he jumped, making photography his only living, shooting for L'Oreal, Timex, Ecko, Ciroc, Disney, Red Bull, and CNN. Self-taught, and a recipient of the Angkor photography award.
The Eye
What he chases is presence. His best pictures pull the viewer into an immediate, almost spiritual closeness with the subject, and ask you to sit with that person's interior life for a second longer than is comfortable. He is nomadic, like so many of the people he shoots, and the honesty of his approach comes from being one of them. He is not visiting the moment. He is in it.
Burning Man
His first Burn, in 2009, was a revelation, equal parts sensory overload and genuine human connection. He misses the looser years and laments the growing police presence, but he still finds the magic, in Robot Heart's sunrise sets and the unplanned collisions of art and people that the playa makes possible. The vibe, he says, is what keeps bringing him back.
Say yes to Burning Man. Say yes to travel. Say yes to the things that stretch your perspective. Regret rarely lives there.Peter Ruprecht
Yes
That yes is the whole philosophy. His influences read the same way, the raw, emotive photography of Robert Whiteman, the Dalai Lama's teachings on compassion and presence, the unbridled energy of the Burning Man community. The dream assignment is a global travel series for Conde Nast. The reset button is an hour lost online when the creative compass needs recalibrating.
- EssentialsA camera, a passport, and a willingness to embrace the unexpected.
- SoundtrackA sunrise DJ set fading into Tibetan singing bowls.
- Follow@PeterRuprecht, though be prepared to want to quit your day job.
The most interesting lives are lived between disciplines.
@PeterRuprecht · ruprechtstudios.com
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