Gilles Peress

Gilles Peress

In 2021 Peress published Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, his two volume, 1000 page book on the Troubles in the North of Ireland, which Peter Galassi of the Museum of Modern Art described as having “the gripping immediacy and epic sweep of a novel by Tolstoy." A work of “documentary fiction” that organizes a decade of photographs from the 1980s into 22 semi-fictional days, the book articulates the helicoidal structure time assumed during the conflict, where today is not only today but all the days like today; days of violence, days of marching, of riots, of unemployment, of prison, of mourning, and also days of “craic” where you try to forget your condition.  

Each of Peress’s projects has been widely exhibited.  Peress is included in major public and private collections throughout the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C; the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée de l'Élysée, Switzerland, amongst others. Peress has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Erich Solomon Prize, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and multiple National Endowment for the Arts grants.