As part of New York’s blossoming art community in the early 1960s, Peter Moore (b. 1932, London, UK, d. 1993, New York) produced an unmatched photographic archive of Fluxus, Judson Dance Theater, and countless “Happenings,” capturing in his photographs the defiance and spirit of the era’s experimental performances. Moore began his career in New York as a photo lab technician at Life magazine, and in the 1970s and 80s, he wrote prolifically on the mechanics of photography for Modern Photography magazine. His work was included in the 1970 show “Happenings and Fluxus” at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, Germany; “Alternative Gestures: Another Look at Dance Photography” at P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York (1978); the Fluxus pavilion at the 1990 Venice Biennale; “In the Spirit of Fluxus” at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1993); the 2nd Lyon Biennale (1993); “Art, Lies and Videotape” at Tate Liverpool (2003); “Simone Forti. Thinking with the Body: A Retrospective in Motion” at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (2014); “The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles: 1960-1980” at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014-15); and the 14th Lyon Biennale (2017), among many others. A large selection of Moore’s photographs were on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the exhibition “Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done” (2018–2019).
