Terry deRoy Gruber

Terry Gruber’s mother, Aaronel deRoy Gruber, was a professional artist.[1] 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 Vassarian, the college’s yearbook. His position on the yearbook became national news when his freedom of speech was censored in 1975 by the College,[2] before becoming reinstated.[3]

Terry Gruber is the founder of Gruber Photographers Inc, where he is leader of a team of photographers,[4] and works in fine arts photography.[3] Gruber also works as a banquet photographer[5] and wedding photographer,[6] and has served as the photographer for the weddings of public figures such as Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones;[4] and Billy Joel and Katie Lee.[7] 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”.[8] Magazines that have published his photos include Vogue, Town & Country, and Vanity Fair.[4] 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[9] and won a Student Emmy Award for Best Comedy.[10]

Books of photographs by Gruber include Working Cats (1979), Fat Cats (1981), and Cat High: The Yearbook (1984).[4] Working Cats features cats who live in working environments, that were recruited from local owners for the book.[11] 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.[12]