John R. Pepper

John Randolph Pepper (born 1958) is a photographer and theatre director.

Pepper was born in Rome, Italy in 1958 to Curtis Bill Pepper, a war correspondent and the head of the Rome bureau for Newsweek magazine, and the sculptor Beverly Pepper. He has one sister, poet Jorie Graham. He was raised in Rome, Italy. He studied History of Art at Princeton University (1976) where he was also one of the original painting members of the '185 Nassau Street Painting Program' and was awarded the Whitney Painting Fellowship in 1975. In 1981 Pepper was admitted as a 'Directing Fellow' to The American Film Institute, Los Angeles.

Pepper began his career as an apprentice to Ugo Mulas who gave him his first formal training in the art of street photography. Pepper pursued his work in photography (analog) for three decades while simultaneously directing in the theatre and in film. His show 'Rome: 1969 – An Hommage to Italian Neo-Realist Cinema' (USA/France 2008) lead him back to his native Italy where Lanterna Magica Edizioni published the book Sans Papier (Italy 2011) with subsequent exhibitions in Rome, Venice, Saint Petersburg (Russia), Paris, Palermo (Sicily).