Terry deRoy Gruber

Terry Gruber’s mother, Aaronel deRoy Gruber, was a professional artist.^[1] He is also the brother of Jamie deRoy.^[2] Growing up in Pittsburgh Pa., Gruber attended Vassar College, during its second year of coeducation where he served as an editor-in-chief of The Vassarion, the college’s yearbook. His position on the yearbook became national news when his freedom of speech was censored in 1975 by the College,^[3] before becoming reinstated.^[4]

Terry Gruber is the founder of Gruber Photographers Inc, where he is leader of a team of photographers,^[5] and works in fine arts photography.^[4] Gruber also works as a banquet photographer^[6] and wedding photographer,^[7] and has served as the photographer for the weddings of public figures such as Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones;^[5] and Billy Joel and Katie Lee.^[8] The Bridal Council stated that Gruber was “one of the first reportage photographers to bring a fashionable, spirited eye to the … world of wedding photography”.^[9] Magazines that have published his photos include Vogue, Town & Country, and Vanity Fair.^[5] He has also commented on trends in wedding photography in articles for newspapers including the New York Times.^[10]

In 2022 his work was shown as a part of the "2022 Alternative Processes" exhibition at the Soho Gallery.^[11] He often works with traditional banquet photography cameras original to the 1920s, made by the company Folmer and Schwing. Specifically, he told PetaPixel in 2022 that "For an indoor shot, I have a 14-inch (~350mm) and 16-inch (~400mm) threaded lens with a Packard shutter with a lemon which is an air squeeze black bulb [for keeping the shutter open] ... For an outdoor shot with flashbulbs for fill light, I use a lens with a shutter — a 14-inch Goerz Dagor with a Copal shutter."^[12] His wedding photography has also been featured in the New York Times in their coverage of the wedding of rapper Remy Banks to Ashley Condina.^[13]

As a filmmaker, his 1989 work Not Just Any Flower, made under thesis advisor Martin Scorsese while attending Columbia Film School, is in the permanent film collection of the MoMA in New York^[14] and won a Student Emmy Award for Best Comedy.^[15] In 1990 he worked as the still photographer on the film Men of Respect.^[16]

Books of photographs by Gruber include Working Cats (1979), Fat Cats (1981), and Cat High: The Yearbook (1984).^[5] Working Cats features cats who live in working environments, that were recruited from local owners for the book.^[17] The majority of the stores were along Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan during the late 1970s. Ellen Freeman has said of the book that, “he photographed your standard-issue bodega cats, sure, but also: Hamlet, a white-coated cat working along-side the white-coated waiters in the dining room at the Algonquin Hotel; Brandy, perching on a ladder in a liquor store; Slugger, a “free agent” who ate hot dogs in the bowels of a baseball stadium; and John John, the Rodent Control Officer at the botanical gardens with his own bank account, among many others.” The book was later translated into both German and Japanese.^[18] Using his past experience with yearbooks Gruber created Cat High in 1984 as Paw Prints, the yearbook of a cat high school in Paw Paw, a spoof on yearbooks that had senior cats (and one dog) pose as graduates with mortarboards and other outfits. The title was re-released by Chronicle Books in 2015.^[19] His book Getting Married, 30 black and white postcards was published in 1996 by Merckendorf & Beamer.