“If you retouch too much, you erase life. It’s no longer photography, it’s plastic surgery. “Peter Lindbergh
©Peter LINDBERGH, Linda Evangelista, Vogue Italy Bahamas, 1989
Echoing the major exhibition at Berlin’s C/O Museum of one of the undisputed masters of fashion photography Peter Lindbergh, Galerie Polka has just hosted a retrospective of the famous German photographer. More accustomed to paying tribute to photojournalism, it may come as a surprise that Galerie Polka is interested in a fashion photographer, but Peter Lindbergh is much more than that.
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He shows women as they are, with their flaws, which he knows how to sublimate like no other. It’s been said that he’s a fashion photographer who doesn’t photograph fashion. Through his photographs, it’s not so much the image of a garment or an ultra-sophisticated, artificial woman that he conveys, no, it’s La Femme that he shows, firmly rooted in her time, with her sensibility, her universe. These images bear no resemblance to conventional fashion photography, but rather bear witness to an era, an idea of femininity and, quite simply, the zeitgeist. And that’s how Peter Lindbergh’s photography resembles photojournalism.
[caption id="attachment_16619" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="©Peter LINDBERGH, Michaela Berko, Linda Evangelista, Kristen Owen, Comme des Garçons Nancy, France, 1988"]
Peter Lindbergh, real name Peter Brodbeck, was born in Germany in 1944. His mother imagined him becoming a tiler, but he preferred to be a window dresser. But it was to photography that he finally turned in 1971. In the mid-70s, he became assistant to the great German photographer Hans Lux, who spent two years teaching him all the tricks of the trade. His first series, already marked by an obvious style, appeared in 1978 in the monthly Stern, the year in which he moved to Paris and initially covered haute-couture fashion shows. Women’s and international magazines, from American ” Vogue ” to French ” Elle “, soon took a liking to his work and commissioned fashion series from him.
©Peter LINDBERGH, Cordula Reyer Camargue, France, 1993
In 1992, he signed a four-year contract with American Harper’s Bazaar in New York, directing campaigns for Armani, Jil Sander, Prada, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. He also produced portraits of celebrities such as Catherine Deneuve, Mick Jagger and Charlotte Rampling. This year also sees the release of his first 60min documentary: “Models: The film“, starring Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Tatjana Patitz, Stephanie Seymour and Cindy Crawford.
© Peter LINDBERGH, Mathilde on Eiffel Tower - Hommage à Erwin Blumenfeld et Marc Riboud - Rolling Stone Magazine Paris, 1989
Peter Lindbergh’s style was deeply influenced by the contrasting images of his childhood in the Ruhr region. Industrial landscapes, dark places, disused factories and metal structures are often found in his photographs. Influenced by the styles of Auguste Sander or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Germany and its expressionist cinema are reflected in these shots, moments of emotion forever immortalized. Peter Lindbergh had little taste for retouching, refusing to erase the singularities that make up a personality to leave room for a raw, powerful image. Loving to work with women with strong identities, he lets them express themselves freely in front of the lens.
©Peter LINDBERGH, Estelle Lefebure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, Vogue US Los Angeles, USA, 1990
A total visionary, the artist’s expert eye has been apprehending the world’s most beautiful women since the late ’80s: Naomi Campbell, Stephanie Seymour, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford and, above all, Kate Moss… Seeing them as diamonds in the rough, the artist has captured their essence in all benevolence, long before they became the muses of the greatest couturiers. He presents them without make-up or sophistication, dressed in simple white shirts on the beaches of Santa Monica, for example, and favors black and white to“distance himself from real life … in order to favor the image”. But in no way does he rob them of their soul.
©Peter LINDBERGH, Cindy Crawford, Tatjana Patitz, Helena Christensen, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Karen Mulder, Stephanie Seymour, Vogue US New York, USA, 1991
These photographs were to revolutionize the fashion world, definitively changing the way an industry defined itself through a façade of perfection. The models are immersed in an ordinary setting, in the middle of busy streets, like snapshots of life, rare moments of emotion etched on film. But above all, Peter Lindbergh’s work functions like that of a true historian, showing us the evolution of women in fashion. From luscious and radiant, women have become increasingly androgynous and famished over the years, to the great dismay of the photographer who deplores the extreme thinness encountered on the catwalks.
©Peter LINDBERGH, Kate Moss - Harper’s Bazaar US Long Island, New York, USA, 1994
His photograph of Kate Moss in dungarees for Harper’s Bazaar New York launched the career of the model who has since become the icon of several generations and the androgynous model style of the 90s. He is one of the few to immortalize her in all her beauty, one of the few to show the sudden fragility of a model at the dawn of an exceptional career. And he presents her in a tight shot, looking tired, with dark circles, unprepared but terribly beautiful. It’s easy to imagine such a shot of today’s Kate Moss, with more curves, more marks of life perhaps.
©Peter LINDBERGH, Jeanne Moreau, Vogue Italy Paris, 2004
The exhibition at Polka Galerie allowed us to rediscover some twenty photographs, including the must-see portraits of Kate Moss, Milla Jovovich, Linda Evangelista and Jeanne Moreau, as well as lesser-known settings that display the photographer’s respect and love for women, their silhouettes, their natural elegance and their sensuality. Resting naked in the tall grass, yet preserving her anonymity, a certain Cordula Reyer greets and hypnotizes us as soon as we enter the exhibition. Further on, the photographer immerses Linda Evangelista in a modern-day ambiance for Comme des Garçons.
Peter LINDBERGH, Naomi Campbell, Vogue Italy Deauville, France, 1988
And the Kate Moss cliché appears in all its splendor, the famous shot that launched the legend. Jeanne Moreau in the beauty of her age rubs shoulders with Naomi Campbell as a formidable black angel or walking Dalmatians. Linda Evangelista also features prominently, sometimes contorting her body. Moving, moving photographs, but certainly a testimony to an era…
The“Peter Lindbergh on street” exhibition at Berlin’s C/O Museum will be on view until January 09, 2011.
C/O Museum Berlin Oranienburger Str 35/36 . 10117 Berlin
Tel 030 28 09 19 25 . [email protected]
Polka Galerie
12 rue Saint Gilles 75003 Paris
Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Marie-Odile Radom
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
