Peter Schlesinger was an 18-year-old student at UCLA when he met the then 28-year-old artist David Hockney, who was teaching a summer class at the university.
[2] Whilst in a relationship with Hockney, he was often the artist's subject and muse; he appears in some of Hockney's best-known works, including Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)[3]—which, in 2018, sold for over $90 million, setting the monetary record for a painting by a living artist— Peter Schlesinger with Polaroid Camera, and Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool.
[4][5] Schlesinger went on to pursue his own career as a visual artist, creating sculptures, paintings, and photographs.
[6] His photography is the subject of two volumes for which he also wrote the text; A Chequered Past (2003, Thames and Hudson)[7] and Peter Schlesinger: A Photographic Memory 1968–1989 (2015, Damiani; co-authored with Hilton Als).
Schlesinger's later partner was the Swedish photographer Eric Bowman, with whom he shared a home in Bellport on Long Island.