Peter Kagan ’75 was loading up the back of his car in California with 70 pounds of photography gear at about 4 a.m. on June 5. He would be flying to Connecticut for Reunion Weekend at Loomis Chaffee. This was a big one for him — 50 years — so he had a bold idea: Photograph his classmates striking a pose that mirrored their pose from their senior portrait, which they would be holding. 

Close to 50 photos later, mission accomplished by this accomplished photographer/cinematographer whose name is connected to legendary musicians Duran Duran, Steve Winwood, the Beatles, and Cutting Crew as well as Rolling Stone magazine, famed fashion photographer Arthur Elgort, the model Paulina Porizkova, and tennis legend John McEnroe.  

When Peter returned to Los Angeles after Reunion Weekend, he said he knew he had something special. He posted the work on petermichaelkagan.myportfolio.com. Glowing feedback poured in.  

 “Aside from positive reaction I’ve gotten from the school and my classmates,” Peter wrote in a June email, “I’m now getting some acknowledgement from others via Instagram message and texts: A thumbs up from a highly discerning creative director at an ad agency I’ve worked with. A congratulations from the former art director at Interview Magazine who worked with [Andy] Warhol. And just today, from a historian, the vice president and head of the photography at Sotheby’s who wrote telling me how great she thinks the project is. My head is spinning.”  

Peter called his work “Held in Time,” and described it this way: “Each classmate was photographed holding their original 1975 yearbook portrait, echoing the pose and presence of their younger self. This project is both an act of remembrance and of re-seeing — a meditation on time, identity, and connection. Fifty years later, I found myself not only reunited with old friends, but in some cases, engaging with people for the first time. Photography, which I first discovered at Loomis under the guidance of my teacher Walter Rabetz, became the bridge across these decades. This work is dedicated to him.”  

Walter started teaching at Loomis in 1970 and was head of the Visual Arts Department for 37 years. He also was the director of the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery from its opening in 1995 until he retired from teaching in 2007. Generations of photography students at Loomis learned from and were encouraged by Walter, who died in 2019. 

“Aside from the craft of working with cameras and processing images in the darkroom in the basement of Palmer Hall, I took away some larger lessons from Loomis,” Peter said during a series of email and phone interviews this summer. “Most importantly, that it takes only one great teacher to change the course of one’s life. I was an unusual kid with a bit of a sad story when I arrived at Loomis as a sophomore. My father suddenly died when I was just shy of my 10th birthday. 

“At age 13,” he continued, “I asked my mother and stepfather if I could go away to boarding school.  Had I not made that choice and found my way into Walter Rabetz’s care, I feel I might have been quite rudderless. He saw in me something that had not been acknowledged previously.”  

Peter said his father had left behind boxes of photo albums to explore. “They were a detailed journal of his youth, his life as a bon vivant and as a young, ambitious engineer,” Peter said via email. “The pictures answered many questions that a little boy would never know to ask. The impact that those albums had on me informed my need to pursue photography myself. My thinking: If pictures could be this important to me, might I be able to say important things with this medium also?” 

Among the boxes in the basement was a bag of cameras. “I brought one of those cameras, a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex, to Walter. ‘Mr. Rabetz, can you show me how to use this?’”  

Walter did just that, and Peter started building a portfolio of photographs that caught Walter’s eye. He suggested that Peter attend college at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). 

“This was not the conventional path for a boy at Loomis, and I know he did not make this recommendation casually,” Peter wrote. “Art school? It took some explaining to my mother, for she understandably thought I was going to Loomis to forge a path to a more predictable, salaried career. But in my case, Walter was completely right, for I discovered myself as a whole person at RISD.” 

Peter is not the only accomplished professional photographer who credits Walter with giving him his start. Six members of the Class of 1974 and 1975, who learned from Walter during his earliest years at Loomis, exhibited their work in the Mercy Gallery during Reunion Weekend in 2024. “50 Years of Photography: An Historic Group Photography Exhibit Dedicated to Walter Rabetz” featured the work of Bruce Hamilton ’74, Just Loomis ’75, Ted Morrison ’75, Keith Raphael ’74, John Sutton ’74, and Peter.  

“I had a chance to return to Loomis and thank Walter in the late ’80s,” Peter said, “and spoke in the school chapel about my journey at that very exciting time, working for record labels making music videos just as MTV was defining itself as a hugely influential force in popular culture.” 

Peter was the director and cinematographer in the mid-1980s for “Notorius,” a worldwide hit by Duran Duran; “(I Just) Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts; and “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood, which earned two Grammy Awards.  

Before that, Peter worked as an assistant for fashion photographer Elgort, whose work appeared in magazines such as Vogue, Glamour, GQ, and Rolling Stone and who shot advertising campaigns for fashion labels such as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent.   

“He saw things in me that made the relationship special,” said Peter, who is still in touch with Elgort, now 85. 

“I ended up shooting a lot of motion picture film, and a guy at Warner Brothers saw one of these little films I lost money on and said, ‘This is what music videos need to look like,’” Peter said. “This was when MTV was just getting figured out in the early to mid ’80s. People were [saying], ‘Why would you want to do [music videos]? They’re terrible. Music videos are awful.’” 

Peter saw a challenge. “I did it with a very down-and-dirty approach,” he said. “I was literally making those videos with cameras that I bought for nothing. At the time in the ’80s people were getting rid of Super 8 film cameras.” 

People had gravitated toward making home movies with VHS camcorders. 

“The closeout bins of camera stores I was going to all the time because I was a young camera guy were filled with fantastic cameras you could get for 50 bucks,” Peter said. “Everyone was drifting to video. Those were the cameras I used to shoot Steve Winwood and Duran Duran. I literally used a $50 camera.” 

Peter is not one to forget those who have helped him along the way, whether it was Walter Rabetz, Arthur Elgort, or Alvin Chereskin. In an Instagram post in January of 2025 Peter remembered Chereskin, who was head of an agency that had the Estee Lauder account. Chereskin had just died at the age of 96. He had given Peter an opportunity when Peter was young. 

“They’d just signed Paulina Porizkova to the largest contract anyone had ever seen at that point, and I was directing the commercials,” Peter said. 

The post had a photo of a young Peter on the streets of New York and included these words: “I navigated New York City on a bicycle, a mountain bike, one of the first of its kind, and I remember arriving at the meeting at the agency, getting to the front desk and having the receptionist glance up at me only to direct me to the back hallway to the mail room where the messengers were meant to drop off packages. I had to explain to her that I wasn’t a messenger, but I was there to meet with the head of the company to discuss the commercials I was about to shoot.” 

“Once in the conference room,” he continued, “just a bit perspired, about to make my presentation, my executive producer leaned in to me and offered, ‘Next time I’ll pay for a cab.’ I ended up shooting at least four spots with Alvin; he was intimidating but hilarious. I will forever be grateful to him for giving me those opportunities.” 

The ’80s were heady days for Peter, who was one of the video directors for the Nike ad that famously used the Beatles’ song “Revolution.” That ad first aired March 26, 1987. 

Peter said that the Nike ad was the first national ad he made, and once again he used a Super 8 camera, editing the shots “such that it was an inspiring film look.” He shot slow motion during an exhibition match, which unnerved John McEnroe, the tennis star known not only for his bursts of outstanding play but also for his outbursts of temper. Shooting slow motion meant the camera was making more noise than usual. 

“John McEnroe was furious with me; he was so mad,” Peter remembered nearly 40 years later. 

Fast Company, a magazine and website that covers innovation in various fields, wrote in 2017, on the 30th anniversary of the commercial, that the spot “changed advertising for good. Until then, almost all the songs used in ads were either jingles or covers of pop tunes. By using the Beatles’ ‘Revolution,’ Nike paved the way for real songs, by the real artists, to be the soundtrack for everything from cars to computers, fashion to phones, and everything in between.” The Beatles and their record label sued Nike for using the song, and eventually the suit was settled. 

The May 1986 Rolling Stone, a special issue about “the hottest in music, movies, TV,” featured a photo of Peter with Paula Greif. The pair worked together on music videos, including the famous Nike “Revolution” ad. Rolling Stone called them “hot video directors” and said their videos “created the feel of artsy home movies.” The caption quoted Peter as saying, “We like the underproduced feeling. That allows for the unexpected to happen.” 

The Loomis photo shoot this summer had its own element of the unexpected. Peter had some doubts when he was packing for the trip to Reunion.   

“I’ll admit that there were definitely moments where I thought that this hair-brained idea might’ve just been a bit too much. One must often see past glimmers of self-doubt when pushing to try and do something out of the ordinary,” he said. “The question crossed my mind … Why am I doing this? But the shoot was great fun. People were really into it. In fact it turned into the after-party on Saturday night. The room was so loud at moments I had a hard time giving direction.”  

The idea for the Reunion project was foreshadowed years before. The inspiration came from Mr. Elgort. One day Peter shared one of his father’s albums with Mr. Elgort, and Mr. Elgort took a photo of Peter holding up a page with photos of his father. Father and son. The resemblance. A striking photo. 

“A thread was drawn, an echo resonated,” Peter reflected this summer. “The poignancy of the photograph has stuck with me, and I have referred to it in a few instances. In 2006 when my son, Michael Alexander Kagan, was 13 years old, I happened upon a photograph of his grandfather, Michael Gregory Kagan, when he was 13 years old. The pictures were taken 74 years apart. As they merged together, an inevitable connection was made. Two people who never met were tied together by a camera, by their genes, and by the intentions of a man [Peter] perpetually searching for connection to his father.’ 

 “The portfolio of my classmates is an extension of this same idea,” Peter continued. “A picture inside of a picture: ‘Held in Time.’”  

 “Held in Time” was featured in the summer issue of Loomis Chaffee Magazine. The photo spread is on Pages 82 and 83. The issue can be found here.