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Peter Svarzbein, son of Latino immigrants and grandson of a holocaust survivor, is a photographer, curator and two-term City Councilman. Graduate of the renowned Eddie Adams Photojournalism Workshop, Svarzbein earned his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. During graduate school at the SVA, Svarzbein created the El Paso Transnational Trolley Project. This self-created activist/artist project, currently scheduled to be published as a limited edition book by Harvard University Press in 2023, is the impetus for Svarzbein’s current public service. His work advocating with community leaders resulted in TXDOT committing $97 million to construct an intra-city streetcar route and refurbish the original historic streetcars that ran between El Paso and Juarez. He currently serves as Chairman of Sister Cities International, the largest and oldest citizen diplomacy non-profit organization in the United States as well as co-chair of the 2020 Mexico-US Sister Cities Mayors’ summit held in Juarez and El Paso, bringing over 400 mayors, academics, and citizen diplomats to the largest binational metroplex in the Western Hemisphere. Svarzbein is a former member of the Jewish Community Relations Council of El Paso, as well as President of the Rio Grande Council of Governments and currently serves as Mayor Pro Tempore of the City of El Paso. Svarzbein has exhibited work both nationally and internationally including a video installation in the Guggenheim’s “Still-Spotting NYC” exhibition, at UTEP’s Rubin Gallery in a bi-national exhibition “El Flow” and in the “Puro Border” exhibition at the INBA Museum of Fine Art in Cd. Juarez, Mex. His most recent installation “Conversos Y Tacos Kosher Gourmet Trucks est. 1492” was funded through a National Endowments for the Arts grant and featured on NPR’s “Here and Now”. He has taught at the Texas Tech College of Architecture, NMSU, and has lectured at Harvard University, and UTEP. |
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