In the summer of 1969, Peter Aaron crisscrossed Bordeaux on a Vespa, carrying a Nikon F and a strobe. He was 23, photographing vineyards and châteaux for an encyclopedia of Bordeaux wines commissioned by wine entrepreneur Alexis Lichine. Telephones were scarce, tourists scarcer, and Aaron often arrived unannounced. A cellar master or proprietor would welcome him, then submit to the unfamiliar experience of being photographed.
The encyclopedia never appeared. Aaron’s pictures sat largely unseen for decades. Now they form the foundation of Bordeaux Chronicle (Vendome Press), a collaboration with wine writer Jane Anson that pairs his early photographs with images made on his return in 2024. For the Hudson-based photographer—who shares a name with Chronogram’s arts editor—the book brings a youthful assignment into conversation with a lifetime of looking.
Aaron’s Bordeaux connections preceded that Vespa expedition. His father, Sam Aaron, helped introduce generations of Americans to fine wine through the New York merchant Sherry-Lehmann. In 1964, he arranged for his teenage son to work at Château Haut-Brion, where Peter hand-pumped wine between barrels to separate it from sediment. Five years later, Sam suggested him for Lichine’s project. Newly graduated from Bard College with a physics degree, Aaron found himself documenting 64 vineyards and châteaux.
His subsequent career took him toward architecture. After apprenticing with Ezra Stoller, he spent decades photographing buildings and interiors, contributing to publications including Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, and The World of Interiors. That experience makes him particularly well equipped to register Bordeaux’s transformation: the changing buildings reveal changing ambitions.
The early photographs describe a working agricultural region, its prestige coexisting with weathered cellars and relatively modest facilities. By 2024, international wine wealth had helped produce elaborate hospitality operations and architect-designed wineries. At Château Lynch-Bages, Aaron photographs an elegantly curving staircase beside a towering sculpture of an octopus tentacle, with barrels visible through a glass wall. Wine production has acquired the presentation—and sometimes the theatricality—of a museum.
Anson’s text supplies the history behind these changes. A Bordeaux resident since 2003 and author of Inside Bordeaux, she organizes the story around place, architecture, people, and winemaking. The scope extends beyond renovated façades to shifts in ownership, technical knowledge, environmental practices, and women’s opportunities in an industry whose cellar crews were once overwhelmingly male.
Some of the book’s most affecting discoveries happen face-to-face. On his return, Aaron showed estate owner Philippe Castéja a photograph of a young man he had taken in 1969. Castéja recognized himself. He remembered putting on a tie especially for the picture. Fifty-five years later, he hosted Aaron and his wife, Brooke, at Château Lynch-Moussas.
Such encounters give the book its human scale. Across the paired photographs, buildings expand, equipment changes, and younger generations assume responsibility. Aaron’s return also lets the people in those early images answer back, adding memories that no photograph could preserve alone.
The long journey comes home to Hudson on Friday, October 23, when Aaron and Anson will celebrate Bordeaux Chronicle at the Red Dot Restaurant at 7pm at a sold out event. The book brings that journey to readers, revealing how much a place—and the eye of the photographer returning to it—can change in 55 years.
