The Acolyte of Fame

HANDS OF A MASTER

Pedro Guerrero's low camera angle confers an almost reverential quality to this series of photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright's hands as he demonstrates the differences between conventional building construction and his more organic methods. Although something of a showman, Wright would often stiffen up before the camera. When photographed for this series of images, the great architect believed only his hands were being shown. Guerrero's gentle ruse and dramatic composition helped produce photographs of a relaxed and open Wright, at ease with the camera and his friend Pedro Guerrero.

Photographer Pedro Guerrero Documented the Quirks of Frank Lloyd Wright and Other 'Gods and Goddesses' "I HAVE A GLORIOUS LIFE," says 88-year-old Mesa native Pedro E. Guerrero, erstwhile friend and photographer of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and two famed artists, Alexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. His "gods and goddesses," as he called these subjects, would impact his life immeasurably, but there was nothing in Guerrero's background that could have predicted relationships with some of the leading visionaries of his century.

"I never could have imagined that these great people would be my friends," he says today, decades later. "And that I would have drinks in the Oak Bar with Frank Lloyd Wright or play pool with Alexander Calder in Sache. Or that I would go down to Little Italy and have a cappuccino with Louise Nevelson."

It was a fluke that Guerrero even met Wright, the mentor who paved the way for his illustrious career. It was a stroke of luck also that he enjoyed a partnership with Wright, rather than the indentured servitude felt by many who apprenticed for the great architect. Guerrero was no sycophant, and his success owes as much to his independent nature as to his talent.

It's a subject Guerrero has pondered during the last several decades. In addition to participating in myriad Wright-inspired events, he's written a book on the master titled Picturing Wright: An Album from Frank Lloyd Wright's Photographer, Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994.

THE GLORY OF GUERRERO'S ARTISTIC LIFE began in earnest in 1939, when he first met Wright, the most famous American architect of the 20th century. With an ego to match his towering talent, Wright's insistence on fitting buildings to their environment, use of

GUIDED BY TALENT Guerrero, below, reflects upon an extraordinary life in photography from the veranda of his territorial adobe home in Florence. RICHARD MAACK SIMPLY STATED Wright wanted this portrait, right, made at the original Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, to say, "I am an architect-what'll you have?" AN AMERICAN ICON Guerrero's favorite portrait of the architect, below right, doesn't even show his face. Wright is immediately identifiable by his porkpie hat, stiff white collar and cane.

natural materials and psychologically complex spaces transformed architectural forms and created a distinctive and original American style. Wright drew an almost cultlike following of young architects and artists to his alternative lifestyle compounds in Arizona and Wisconsin.

Guerrero was 22 and fresh out of art school when his father, who had painted a sign for Wright, told him to go out to Taliesin West in present-day Scottsdale and ask Wright for a job. It was during the Depression, and Guerrero had no prospects or money, but the budding photographer had something else in mind.

"I was going to try to do a Matthew Brady kind of thing," he recalls. "I was going to get a darkroom, mount it on a truck and take photographs of people in Pine and Payson and places like that. Those were wonderful towns in those days. They were isolated and weren't on the way to someplace."

But Guerrero, a dutiful son, heeded his father's advice, which resulted in his first photography job. It's something that continues to amaze Guerrero nearly 70 years later.

"I wonder what would have happened to me if I had driven out the day before or the day after. It might not have happened," he says. "I drove into the desert; there was nothing there. Then I saw Taliesin West in the distance, and I aimed at it. I worked my way up there and changed my life forever."

The memory of his first encounter with Wright still makes Guerrero laugh. "What I realized only later was why he hired me so quickly. My samples didn't show any skill with architecture-I had two or three nudes. If I had known the kind of a guy he was, I might not have shown him any samples. I might not even have shown up." Guerrero still owns the nudes he showed Wright in 1939. They hang in his current home in Florence about 75 miles from Taliesin West.

Wright, however, hired him on the spot. Guerrero suspects Wright just wanted someone who could operate a camera-it was as simple as that.

"He needed a photographer," Guerrero says, "and I think he could see that I could handle the camera. I knew enough about photography. He just kicked the door open and said do whatever you want."

Guerrero did much of what he wanted during the next 20 years.

"Mr. Wright was very generous. After a month or so, he saw something of mine he liked, and he said I ought to stay for tea." Guerrero usually left before 4, but he stayed and listened as Wright told the Taliesin West fellowship of students that Guerrero had talent. "I became convinced I was a good photographer when Wright liked my work. As I got to know him better, I realized this guy was a giant and that I was very lucky."

Guerrero was hired by Wright to document the creation of Taliesin West, and he was told the pay wasn't much, but he could eat and live there. But there really was no salary. When the fellowship started making plans to go to Wisconsin in spring 1940, Guerrero asked to become a member of the fellowship. Wright agreed to waive the tuition, and said they would simply exchange services-Guerrero's photography for the tuition.

Guerrero left the fellowship in May 1941 to enlist in the military during World War II. After the war, he agreed to become Wright's on-call photographer.

Guerrero says it was easy to photograph Wright. “You would think that I told God to shine a light on him. I didn't; it just happened to be there... Mr. Wright was writing the music and I was playing the score.

The friendship flowered. “I wasn't there adoring him. I would never compete with him as an architect the way the students would. I was no threat.... I wasn't a bowing and scraping sycophant. Still, Wright wanted Guerrero to adhere to his wishes, and Guerrero recalls the time Wright insisted the photographer use an antiquated camera lacking even a shutter. Guerrero used it to please Wright, but he went back to his own equipment after he figured out how to get out of trouble if Wright discovered his ruse.

“When someone asked him what kind of pencils he used, Wright said, 'It isn't the pencil, it's the man,'” Guerrero recalls. “So when he saw me using my camera and he asked why I wasn't using his camera, I said, 'Because it isn't the camera, Mr. Wright. It's the man.' He never bothered me again. When Guerrero left Taliesin West to join the Army, the pacifist Wright disapproved. Guerrero recalls apologizing and feeling as though he was running away from home, but his own father had told him to stand up for his country. Ever dutiful, Guerrero did as he was told and fought in Italy. Fortunately, his decision to serve did not affect his relationship with Wright.

After the war, Guerrero moved to New York City. He was soon photographing for House & Garden, Harper's Bazaar and a spate of women's and shelter magazines. In 1951, he moved his growing family to New Canaan, Connecticut, although he still flew off at a moment's notice to work with Wright. Guerrero regrets, however, “dropping the ball” on the Guggenheim Museum, a Wright masterpiece. Before construction began, Guerrero showed up every day at an exhibition Wright presented. “I didn't care if anyone needed me anywhere else,” he recalls. “I was there to greet Mr. Wright and get him off his cab-usually I had to pay for it-but when it came time to build, I never went up there. I have no idea why.

Equally strange, Wright never asked Guerrero to document the job. “He would call me to go to Florida, or Dallas to photograph a building, or to have breakfast with him in New York, but he never said, 'I don't see you at the building.

Guerrero recalls going out in public with Wright. “He had this great presence. It wasn't the cane, the cape and the hat that made Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Frank Lloyd Wright that made the cane, the cape and the hat. He glided. He was like Superman. He knew exactly what kind of presence he projected, and he went for it 100 percent. He knew exactly who he was, what he was and what he could do.

In 1959, Wright died, just months after completing the Guggenheim. Guerrero still doesn't know why he never photographed the famed museum. “I've been trying to figure it out ever since,” he says.

In the decades following Wright's death, Guerrero continued working, befriending and photographing Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Edward Durell Stone and other modern architects and designers. Over the years, he also forged relationships with Calder and Nevelson, who would become prized subjects and friends. After Nevelson died in 1988, however, Guerrero hung up his camera.

“I got tired of having my gods and goddesses die on me,” he says. “Wright died and I felt myself floating in space. I thought of ending my career... then I ran into Calder and that spurred it on again. And then Calder died, and there I was. When Louise died, I decided I wasn't going to do another one, and I didn't try.

Guerrero returned to photography in the mid-1990s, occasionally shooting for magazines or Wright homeowners.

“I've been taken out of retirement a few times,” he says. “I try to make it as hard as possible for people to get me back to work, but sometimes I let them.

Guerrero realizes he always had something unusual in common with his unlikely architect friend.

“He didn't think he was ever going to die,” Guerrero says. “I'm sure of that. And I didn't think he would either.

Visiting Taliesin

TALIESIN WEST, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S DESERT "CAMP" and winter home in north Scottsdale, was a remote and unlikely backdrop in 1939 for Pedro Guerrero's fortuitous introduction to the style-setting architect.

Wright and his apprentices were just two years into the Taliesin West-building project, collecting rocks and sand for construction of what the American Institute of Architects later selected as a notable example of the master designer's contributions to architecture.

The 600-acre complex today includes lecture halls and performance theaters; an architectural studio; residential spaces where up to 70 people live, work and study; bathrooms that were innovative for the time; and a bookstore noted for its extensive selection of books and prints about Wright.

Visitors to Taliesin-which means "shining brow" in Welsh-will discover a community of students and architects amid thick, slanting walls of rocks bound with concrete, surprisingly low doorways that dictate a careful duck, rooftops that resemble the original canvas ones, and inviting massive fireplaces that helped warm the structures, which had no modern heating or cooling until later years.

Wright's sleeping quarters, recently restored and now included on some of the public tours, demonstrate the austere-but-artistic angular nature of the buildings and furniture, much of which also was designed by the visionary trend-setter.

Tour Taliesin West's oddly shaped, low-ceilinged rooms and intriguingly placed passages and walkways and you see why Pedro Guerrero fell so happily into his association with the place and its creator-and launched his dynamic photography career. All LOCATION: 12621 N. Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd., Scottsdale, about 27 miles northeast of downtown Phoenix.

GETTING THERE: From downtown Phoenix, drive east on Interstate 10 and merge onto State Route 202. Merge again onto State Route 101 and drive north about 9.5 miles to Shea Boulevard. Exit and turn right onto Shea Boulevard and drive about 3 miles to Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard. Turn left (north) and after about a mile watch for signs at the intersection with East Cactus Road directing visitors to the right (northeast) and a short driveway to Taliesin West.HOURS, DATES: September 1 through June 30, daily, 9 A.M. to 4 P.M.; July 1 through August 31, Thursdays to Mondays, 9 A.M. to 4 P.M.; closed Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

FEES: Various tours range from $16 to $45. Call (480) 860-8810 for recorded information.

WEATHER: Some tours may be canceled during heavy rain.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: (480) 860-2700; www.franklloydwright.org.

Learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin West at arizonahighways.com (Click on "Winter Recreation Guide")