Anders Petersen

A master of contemporary photographyBorn in Solna (Sweden) in 1944, Anders Petersen is a world-famous photographer. It is in Hamburg, city port rich in cafes where the most disparate people mingle, that at 18 years old he immersed himself in nightlife and counterculture. Having become a regular host of the Lehmitz café, from which he drew the theme, the decor, the models for his first series of photographs (1978), which brought him immediate recognition and is has since become the emblem of all future developments of its opens. A student at the beginning of Christer Strömholm, the greatest photographer Swedish at the time, Anders Petersen shares with him the same approach to the world and the same form of aesthetics, essentially that of a black and white photograph and white having the acuity and dynamism of the snapshot, but also a respect and a concern for others, fundamental when it comes to the portrait, other major theme common to both photographers. A retrospective of a magnitude unpublishedSome 40 years after the acquisition of twenty-five proofs of his very first series, the National Library of France is today dedicating a major monographic exhibition, a first in Paris. The ensemble put together highlights highlights the common thread that links the different periods of the work of Petersen and allows to measure the permanence and the deepening of a style which from the beginning responded to personal research based on the human contact and freedom of gaze. Extending and reflecting the event, this The book presents more than 300 photographs by the artist, ranging from Café Lehmitz to the recent series Roma (2012) and Reggio Emilia (2012). They are thus rendered manifest the universe effect that the whole work generates, as well as the invention and evolution of a deeply intuitive and sensual writing.