Art Perry is not only one of Canada’s best-kept underground secrets, he’s also a bonafide bohemian guru. For forty years, Perry’s life has engaged, befriended, supported, taught, and documented the often-marginal cultural figures he admires.
Best known for his Penguin Putnam publication THE TIBETANS: Photographs—the result of five years travel throughout Himalayan Buddhist and nomadic communities—Perry has paralleled this photographing and writing about oppressed world communities with his ongoing religious belief in and valuing of the holiness within outsider culture . . . culture that goes counter to the mainstream
An associate professor in cultural studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Art Perry teaches the marriage of art and life. In his lectures on the Beat Generation, he continues to practice what he preaches: art, poetry, music come from the extremes of living. As a result, Perry’s silver print portraits of counterculture icons carry an empathy and deep passionate commitment to creative bohemian outlaws.
