Peter Lindbergh

Angel

One of the most respected and widely emulated photographers working today, Peter Lindbergh has been described as a “poet of glamour.” Since 1978, when Stern Magazine published his first series of fashion photographs, his work has been published by every major international fashion magazine and commissioned for the influential campaigns of the worlds leading fashion designers.

Born on the Polish border of East Germany in 1944, Peter Lindbergh spent his childhood in the West German town of Duisburg. Located at the heart of the Ruhr coal field, Duisburg was then a flourishing center of heavy industry. His uncle worked as a sheep farmer with a herd of 3,000, which he kept on a rented parcel of land near the Rhine River. Growing up, Lindbergh spent all of his free time outdoors. The side of the river where he lived was flanked by green grass and trees, while the other was crammed with factories and bordered by ship loading docks.

Photographic historian Martin Harrison noted the impact of these contrasting environments in Images of Women, Lindbergh’s 1997 book, which provided an overview of his work from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. “The opposition of the bare tree and the electricity pylon [referring to two images on page 108-109], is revealed as a symbol of Lindbergh

‘s autobiography, a clue to a thread which runs through much of his work.”

One of his most well known early photographs, shot in 1988 for a Comme des Garçons campaign, shows three robotic-looking models dwarfed against the overwhelming scale of the machinery in a steam-era factory. The image crystallizes the enormous political, industrial and cultural changes, which occurred in Europe at the end of the 1980s.

Lindbergh’s current photography mirrors contemporary life. Describing his work, American Photo has said: “The most important quality in Peter Lindbergh’s fashion photography is a forthright, almost shocking honesty. His models seem to open themselves emotionally to his camera. Amid the artifice, they seem real.”

Peter Lindbergh was 27 when he picked up a camera for the first time. Shortly afterward, he became an assistant to photographer Hans Lux. By 1973, after completing a two-year apprenticeship with Lux, he began working independently as an advertising photographer. His early images were characterized by a preference for black and white film, which continues to comprise 60% of his work. They were ripe with spontaneity, and his models’ expressions lacked the artifice prevalent in fashion. The early work had a strong narrative quality. In 1978, after Stern Magazine published his first fashion series of photographs and demand for his work became overwhelming, he moved to Paris.

Lindbergh’s photographs have since appeared in every major fashion magazine published, including Italian, French, British and American Vogue, W, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Stern, and Rolling Stone. Until January 1997, much of his editorial output appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. In 1992 Bazaar signed a contract with Lindbergh, an unprecedented move at the time. During the last ten years, and some still today, he has photographed the advertising campaigns for the foremost designers in America and Europe, including Giorgio Armani, Prada, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Jil Sander and Hugo Boss.