Early work Kayafas was born in
Boston in 1971 and raised in
Concord, Massachusetts. His father, Gus Kayafas, founded the undergraduate photography program at
Massachusetts College of Art, and his mother Arlette Kayafas, is the founder and owner of Gallery Kayafas in Boston. He moved to New York City in 1989 to study photography at New York University's
Tisch School of the Arts, from which he received a BFA in 1993. During his college years, he worked as a printer for
Rosalind Fox Solomon and
Sylvia Plachy, and studied with
Nan Goldin,
Anthony Barboza, and
A. D. Coleman. Kayafas spent the summer and fall of 1991 in
San Francisco where he did an independent study with
Henry Wessel, Jr. at the
San Francisco Art Institute, and worked for Andy Grundberg at the
Friends of Photography. In 1990, he met and began working for
Leslie George Katz, founder and publisher of the
Eakins Press. In 1993, Katz appointed Kayafas the Director of the press, a position he has continued for three decades.
Professional life Kayafas' photographs have been published in five monographs: Peter Kayafas:
Coney Island Waterdance (2021), Peter Kayafas:
The Way West (2020),
Totems (2012),
O Public Road! Photographs of America (2009), and
The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta (2007). His photographs have also been published in various magazines and journals—including DoubleTake Magazine and
The Southern Review—as well as in photography books, including
Bystander: A History of Street Photography (2001 and 2017), and
The Spirit of Family by
Al Gore and
Tipper Gore (2002). Kayafas has had numerous solo exhibitions in New York City and Boston. In 2018 he became Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation of
Yaddo. In 2019, Kayafas was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship for photography. As a publisher and editor running
the Eakins Press Foundation for three decades, Kayafas has produced books by photographers. He has been teaching photography at
Pratt Institute since 2000, and has been represented by Sasha Wolf Projects since 2003.
Coney Island Waterdance Coney Island Waterdance is a collection of photographs by Kayafas taken between the years of 1991 and 2002, which depicts swimmers in the summertime as well as the
Polar Bear Club in the winter. A book featuring this work was published in 2021 by Purple Martin.
Cuba Kayafas travelled to
Cuba in 2000 and 2001.
The New Yorker called his Cuba photographs "crisp and direct, and the best of them vibrate with understated graphic tension." Kayafas' pictures from Cuba were exhibited in
Two Views of Cuba with photographer
Lou Jones, at the
DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts in 2002.
Romania Romania is a collection of photographs that was made during several trips to
Romania by Kayafas from 2003 to 2005. The collection was created by driving more than 10,000 kilometers and photographing the Romanian countryside and many Romanian cities. These photographs were exhibited at the
Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City (2005) and the Romanian Embassy in Washington, DC (2006).
The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta Designed by the Dutch designer Tessa van der Waals and produced in Holland in 2007,
The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta is a book about the carved graves in the remote
Merry Cemetery. There are photographs of the colorful tombstones and their respective epitaphs, with translations by Adrian Sahlean. The book also includes an essay by the Romanian scholar Sanda Golopentia. These photographs were exhibited at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City (2005) and the Romanian Embassy in Washington, DC (2006).
People In New York Published in coordination with the Sasha Wolf Gallery in 2004,
People In New York is an exhibition catalogue that includes a selection of 13 photographs by Kayafas of people on the streets and in the parks of
New York City. The book includes a short essay on that common occurrence in the city: the familiar glance from a stranger.
O Public Road! O Public Road! Photographs of America is a 2009 book of photographs published by Purple Martin. It features 160 pages of black and white photographs of landscapes, road signs, and people made by Kayafas during two decades of road trips across America. The book includes an essay by
Allan Gurganus and a song by
Eef Barzelay.
Totems Totems is an exhibition and publication project by Kayafas that consists of photographs of abandoned buildings in the west that
The New Yorker said "have both sculptural presence and a symbolic weight." The book
Totems is a 2012 monograph by Kayafas, with an essay by art critic,
Jed Perl. Of the Totems photographs, Perl writes: "Kayafas's explorations of an endangered vernacular architecture are at once straightforward records and unabashedly poetic meditations, a matter of the photographer testing the quality of his attentiveness against the facts on the ground. The lyric impulse is sharpened by the documentary convention."
Mexico City Mexico City is a collection of photographs that were made by Kayafas between 2012 and 2016. Since more than half of Mexico City's 21 million people are under twenty-five, Kayafas chose to focus on various rituals of the youth sub-culture that are prevalent in many parts of the city.
The Way West The Way West is a photographic project by Kayafas that includes exhibitions and a monograph. The book,
Peter Kayafas: The Way West, is the third monograph of Kayafas' work photographing along the roads of the United States, released in 2020. It includes an essay by writer
Rick Bass, as well as images from ten years and thousands of miles of travel in the Plains States of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado. According to a review of the book in
Hyperallergic from April 14, 2020: "Kayafas has come back with what surely constitutes one of the most exhaustive, vivid photographic studies of a region to be produced anywhere in recent decades." == Publications ==