Philip Perkis passed away on Nov. 21, 2025 at Montefiore-Nyack Hospital. He had just turned 90 years old. He lived with his wife, Cyrilla Mozenter, in Stony Point, N.Y. He is survived by Cyrilla and a daughter, Rachel Durland, of Warwick, N.Y. and her husband Garrett, two grandsons, Benjamin Durland, and Lucas Durland, and a great-granddaughter, Amaiia Durland Lopez.
Philip was born on Nov. 12, 1935 in Boston, Mass. He was predeceased by his parents, Morris Perkis and Ruth Gordon, and his sister, Zola Logan. He served on a flight crew as a tail gunner in the US Air Force from 1954 to 1958.
Philip graduated with a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1962. A professor emeritus and former chair of photography at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn), he has also taught at the School of Visual Arts (NYC), New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and The Cooper Union, among others.
Many turns of good fortune enabled Perkis to travel and photograph extensively. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and been the recipient of a Wingate Paine Teaching Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts (twice). He has published seven books, including in 2001, “Teaching Photography, Notes Assembled” that has been translated into several languages and remains in print. A new Spanish edition is forthcoming. Monographs include “Warwick Mountain Series,” “The Sadness of Men,” “Twenty Days, Twenty Comments,” “In a Box Upon the Sea,” “Mexico,” and “Nōtan” published in 2024, that includes his last photographs and a memoir-esque text. He also produced two recent book collaborations with his wife, the artist Cyrilla Mozenter, “Octave” and “ar”.
His photographs have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums internationally. Jin Ju Lee’s feature length documentary “Just to See, a Mystery: A Film Portrait of Philip Perkis” was produced in 2016.
Helen Levitt described Philip’s pictures as “not like anyone else’s. They are like looking at a dream.”
Many of his books have been published by anmoc press in Korea where his work is particularly influential. Taehee Park, is curating a retrospective exhibition for the Ryugaheon Gallery in Seoul. An oral history “Philip Perkis, Swimming in the Mystery” is featured on The Vision and Art Project website at https://shorturl.at/MiRz8.
Philip lived in accordance with the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff, and was a devoted member of the Nyland group based in Warwick N.Y.
Philip was buried in the Beth Shalom Cemetery in Florida, N.Y. A memorial will be held at a future date to celebrate his memory.
Funeral arrangements are under the direction of T.S. Purta Funeral Home.