Earlier this year Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe Hamburg inaugurated their run of the ongoing exhibition Peter Lindbergh: Untold Stories. The exhibit features unseen work of the iconic German fashion photographer and is the first ever survey exhibition curated by Peter Lindbergh himself prior to his passing in September 2019. It celebrates the legacy of his work with a collection of 140 photographs accumulated over two years which offer an insight into his extensive oeuvre, spanning from the 1980’s the present day.
“The first time I saw my photographs on the walls of the exhibition mock-up, I was startled, but in a positive way. It was overwhelming to be thus confronted with who I am,” Lindbergh explained during an interview in 2019. His famous black and white work is known for transcending their own context and giving an alternate spin on fashion photography by finding ways to not have his images centred around the fashion.
“The exhibition allowed me to reconsider my images in a non fashion context. The presentation aims to open the photographs to different interpretations and perspectives. However, I don’t try to claim that my pictures aren’t fashion photographs, that wouldn’t be true either. I insist on the definition “fashion photography because for me that terms doesn’t mean that one has to depict fashion — photography is much bigger than fashion, it is a part of contemporary culture, ” he commented.
The showcase is divided into three chapters, two of which are large scale installations: opening with Manifest, which offers an insightful thought provoking immersive introduction to the late photographer’s perspective of fashion photography; while the central section features never before experimental works of the photographers shown in pairs or groups; and it then closes with a film installation entitled Testament (2014) which is an unveiling of a hither unknown side of the character of the iconic image maker featuring some unexpected and emotionally moving subjects. The exhibition is currently on at the Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe Hamburg until the the 1st of November and is also accompanied by a 320 page hardcover catalogue with 150 images and exclusive interviews with the photographer. For more information visit MKG.
For over 30 years, german photographer and film maker Peter Lindbergh has created a defining language of persona and iconography. His work is now the subject of a solo exhibition at Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld. Occupying two floors, the exhibition consists of photographs spanning the 1980s through the present, many never before exhibited, each personally selected by the photographer from his archives. The exhibition is a kaleidoscopic, non-linear journey into Lindbergh’s pictorial world.
The exhibition also includes poetry by Pulitzer Prize Nominee Forrest Gander. A recorded voice, reciting Gander’s poem will loop throughout the exhibition.
Twin spoke to the legendary photographer about his solo exhibition and highlights of his career.
The exhibition will be on display at Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld from September 7 until October 4.
This is an exhibition with about 35 images, many of them never presented in a gallery. Viewers can expect a mixture of portraits, landscapes and still lifes mixed with Forrest Gander’s reading of the writing he did especially for the exhibition, which will permeate through a sound system for the duration of the show.
How did the idea to work with Forrest Gander come up?
This idea came about because I love Forrest’s poems. He’s also from the Mohave Desert, where many of my pictures have been shot, so it made him the perfect collaborator. I just love the idea of words and images together and think that one will inspire or enrich the other.
It is not just fashion images but also landscape and still lifes, is there a link between them? I don’t think that there are many so called “fashion pictures” in the exhibition. It’s more about a poetic mixture of portraits, landscapes and some still lifes. I do lots of landscapes and stills when I’m out shooting and love to mix all these different types of images together. In the end, I always enjoy doing a portrait or something, even when I’m shooting stills of hands or the desert.
Do you have a favorite moment as a fashion photographer?
An important moment was at the end of the eighties, when I could not, or didn’t want to, photograph women in the style used by fashion photographers and magazines. This is why I refused to work for American Vogue. After Alexander Liberman called me in to ask me why, I explained to him that my view of women was very different from that of Vogue. He proposed that I take one of his editors and photograph the type of women that I want and to show him the results. So I went with Carlyne Cerf to Los Angeles and photographed six models in white shirts. The models were Christy Turlington, Estelle Lefebure, Karen Alexander, Linda Evangelista, Rachel Williams and Tatjana Patitz. This was the beginning of 1988. These women were later recognized as supermodels and dominated fashion magazines around the world.
How do you think fashion photography has changed since you started?
Although there are interesting photographers working today, I believe that mainstream fashion photography today has put itself in a corner by overusing Photoshop. This has created an image of women that I totally disagree with. For me, fashion photographs are portraits of women in the context of the time they’re shot. The definition of a woman was always more important to me than anything else in fashion photography. The term “fashion photographer” is not automatically identifiable with an interesting point of view, when you study the actual fashion magazines. I’m saying this about mainstream tendencies, there are, of course, interesting magazines out there today.
Where do you find inspiration?
Inspiration is everywhere and everything is inspiration.
Are you working on some new projects now?
We’re currently working on several upcoming museum and gallery exhibitions, as well as two book projects. These include a large museum exhibition in Zagreb, Croatia (April 2014), an exhibition at Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles (February 2014) and a second volume of “Images of Women” featuring work from 1995-2013.
Japanese fashion visionary Yohji Yamamoto deserves an exhibition that’s as conceptual as his designs. It’s apt then that Wapping Project has served up such an esoteric installation for the exhibition, Making Waves. Part of the Victoria & Albert museum’s major retrospective, the show comprises an oversized white silk wedding dress made with bamboo crinoline from Yamamoto’s A/W 1998 collection that hangs, solitary, in the Boiler House. The piece makes an understated statement that’s typically Yamamoto.
Meanwhile, over at the Wapping Project Bankside the works of the seven photographers who produced imagery for Yamamoto’s celebrated catalogues go on display. The stellar line-up features Nick Knight, Peter Lindbergh, Craig McDean, Sarah Moon, Paolo Roversi, Max Vadukul and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Though the photographers are familiar, the images themselves star the kind of women Yamamoto is drawn to – strong types rarely seen on the pages of the glossies. A man after our own sartorial heart.
Yohji Making Waves is at Wapping Project, E1 until 14 July 2011 and Yohji’s Women is at Wapping Project Bankside, SE1 until 14 May 2011.
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