John Dyer has been a photographer for 50 years. He had the great good fortune to learn from Russell Lee and Garry Winogrand, two very different side of the same photographic coin. He has been described as a regionalist: his interests have always been to photograph those among us who represent the traditional, authentic and historically important. Thus, he's shot American Indians, Montana Hutterites, Texas Conjunto musicians, the original cowboys (the Vaqueros) on huge Texas ranches. He's shot boxers, Lucha Libre wrestlers, and done portraits of many of our most interesting Texans: Sandra Cisneros, Selena, Johnny Gimble, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Robert Earl Keen, Johnny Rodriguez. He has published three books of photographs: "Conjunto", "El Vaquero Real, the Original American Cowboy" and "Hidden Treasures San Antonio". "The Edge of Texas" is completed but not yet published.
John has exhibited his photographs at a wide variety of museums and galleries and is represented by Heidi Vaughan Fine Art in Houston, Texas. In 2019, the National Portrait Gallery acquired one of his Selena portraits. John’s exhibition, “Selena Forever/Siempre Selena”, originated at the McNay Museum of Art and has since travelled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in September, 2021. In 2023, it moved the Eagle Pass Cultural Art Center, and is currently at the El Paso Museum of Art.
He lives with his wife, the painter Diane Mazur, in San Antonio, Texas.