Peter Dombrovskis, photographer and environmental activist, was born of Latvian parents in a refugee camp in Wiesbaden at the end of World War 2. He immigrated to Australia at the age of fifteen, and started taking photographs in the 1960s. Strongly guided by Olegas Truchanas, credited as his 'mentor', he was equally influenced by landscape photographers of mid-century America such as Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston and Eliot Porter. His photographs, published widely in the form of books, calendars, cards and posters, have been instrumental in the conservation of various Tasmanian wild places including the Franklin River, under serious threat in the early 1980s. Dombrovskis died while photographing in the Western Arthur Range in southwest Tasmania. In 2003 he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, the first Australian amongst only 58 photographers represented in the collection. He is represented in the National Library of Australia, the Australian Heritage Commission, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens and many private collectors.
