Peter Lindbergh
Encyclopedia
Peter Lindbergh, born Peter Brodbeck, is a German photographer and filmmaker, born on November 23, 1944 in Leszno
, Poland
. (The city was German between 1939 and 1945 and called Reichsgau Wartheland
.) He currently lives in Paris
, New York
and Arles
.
.
After a basic school education he worked as a window dresser for the Karstadt and Horten department stores in Duisburg. At 18, he moved to Switzerland
. Eight months later, he went from Lucerne
to Berlin
and took evening courses at the Academy of Arts. He hitchhiked to Arles in the footsteps of his idol, Vincent van Gogh
. After several months in Arles, he continued through Spain
and Morocco
, a journey that took him two years.
Back to Germany he studied Free Painting at the College of Art in Krefeld (North Rhine-Westphalia). In 1969, while still a student, he exhibited his work for the first time at the Galerie Denise René/Hans Mayer. Concept Art
marked his last period of interest in art. In 1971 he looked towards photography and worked for two years as assistant to Düsseldorf-based photographer Hans Lux.
, first the Italian, then the English, French, German and American Vogue, later for The New Yorker
, Vanity Fair
, Allure
, and Rolling Stone
. His photographs mostly black-and-white, uses a pictorial language that takes its lead from early German cinema, and also from the Berlin art scene of the 1920s.
In 1988, Anna Wintour
arrived at American Vogue and signed Lindbergh for the magazine. He shot Miss Wintour’s first, then revolutionary American Vogue, November 1988 cover.
Lindbergh was the first photographer to bring together Linda
, Naomi
, Tatjana
, Cindy
and Christy
on one shot, so kick-starting the whole “Supermodel Phenomenon”(with his legendary January 1990 British Vogue cover.)
He made portraits of Catherine Deneuve
, Mick Jagger
, Charlotte Rampling
, Nastassja Kinski
, Tina Turner
, John Travolta
, Madonna
, Sharon Stone
, John Malkovich
and countless others.
When Lindbergh was put under contract to the American Harpers Bazaar by Liz Tilberis in 1992, she made her editor sign a seven figure check.
His first book, 10 Women by Peter Lindbergh, a black and white portfolio of ten top contemporary models was published in 1996 and had sold more than 100,000 copies as of 2008.
He has twice shot the Pirelli
calendar, in 1996 and 2002. The latter, which featured actresses instead of models for the first time and was shot on the back lot of Universal Studios
, was described by Germaine Greer
as "Pirelli's most challenging calendar yet."
Gallery in 1994 and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt in 1996.
The same year, prompted by the reaction to the 1994 show, the Bunkamura Museum of Art accorded Peter Lindbergh a retrospective, which broke the previous attendance records set by the Jacques Henri Lartigue
and Leni Riefenstahl
retrospectives.
In 1997, Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof
showed Peter Lindbergh: Images of Women, which toured museums in Hamburg, Milan, Rome and Vienna in 1998, followed by showings at the International Photography Festival in Japan in 1999 and 2000. Irina Antonova
brought Images of Women to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 2002, making Peter the first photographer exhibited by the Pushkin.
Peter Lindbergh was the first photographer to incorporate storylines into his fashion editorials. His iconic Martian story with Helena Christensen
for Italian Vogue in 1990 was the beginning of the narrative in fashion photography.
The Metropolitan Museum showed in the exhibition Models As Muse in 2009. In 2010, his exhibition On Street at the C/O (Berlin) counted 90 000 visitors.
The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
in Beijing, China exposed in April and May 2011 The Unknown Lindbergh’s gigantic installation, curated by Jerome Sans. It attracted more than 70 000 visitors.
Exposed in 2008 at Rencontres d'Arles festival, France. An evening screening has presented in Théâtre Antique: Manon a Mano with Paolo Roversi.
Inner Voices (1999), a thirty-minute drama documentary examining self-expression in method acting, won the prize for Best Documentary at the International Festival of Cinema in Toronto in 2000.
In 2001, Lindbergh directed an experimental half-hour film for Channel 4
about his friend Pina Bausch
, titled Pina Bausch - Der Fensterputzer.
Shown off at Cannes in 2007, his latest film Everywhere at Once, co-directed with Holly Fisher, had its world premiere at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
in New York. Narrated by Jeanne Moreau
, this haunting, vaguely troubling film consists of refilmed Lindbergh photographs, many of them unpublished interwoven with excerpts from Tony Richardson
's film Mademoiselle
.
's Metropolis
or Eisenstein
's Potemkin
, or Lang's Depression-era images, but by Lindbergh's 1950s childhood across the Rhine from the foreboding Krupp
steelworks in the industrial Ruhrland city of Duisburg.
Foundation Award. In 2005 he was awarded the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Photography.
Leszno
Leszno is a town in central Poland with 63,955 inhabitants . Situated in the southern part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999, it was previously the capital of the Leszno Voivodeship . The town has county status.-History:...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. (The city was German between 1939 and 1945 and called Reichsgau Wartheland
Reichsgau Wartheland
Reichsgau Wartheland was a Nazi German Reichsgau formed from Polish territory annexed in 1939. It comprised the Greater Poland and adjacent areas, and only in part matched the area of the similarly named pre-Versailles Prussian province of Posen...
.) He currently lives in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Arles
Arles
Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....
.
Biography
Peter Lindbergh spent his childhood in DuisburgDuisburg
- History :A legend recorded by Johannes Aventinus holds that Duisburg, was built by the eponymous Tuisto, mythical progenitor of Germans, ca. 2395 BC...
.
After a basic school education he worked as a window dresser for the Karstadt and Horten department stores in Duisburg. At 18, he moved to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. Eight months later, he went from Lucerne
Lucerne
Lucerne is a city in north-central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of that country. Lucerne is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne and the capital of the district of the same name. With a population of about 76,200 people, Lucerne is the most populous city in Central Switzerland, and...
to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and took evening courses at the Academy of Arts. He hitchhiked to Arles in the footsteps of his idol, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
. After several months in Arles, he continued through Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, a journey that took him two years.
Back to Germany he studied Free Painting at the College of Art in Krefeld (North Rhine-Westphalia). In 1969, while still a student, he exhibited his work for the first time at the Galerie Denise René/Hans Mayer. Concept Art
Concept art
Concept art is a form of illustration where the main goal is to convey a visual representation of a design, idea, and/or mood for use in films, video games, animation, or comic books before it is put into the final product. Concept art is also referred to as visual development and/or concept design...
marked his last period of interest in art. In 1971 he looked towards photography and worked for two years as assistant to Düsseldorf-based photographer Hans Lux.
Photography
Peter Lindbergh moved to Paris in 1978 and started working internationally for VogueVogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, first the Italian, then the English, French, German and American Vogue, later for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, Allure
Allure (magazine)
Allure is the leading U.S. women’s beauty magazine, published monthly by Condé Nast in New York City. It was founded in 1991 by editor in chief Linda Wells, who has been at the helm of the magazine ever since. From its inception, the magazine has been widely recognized for its intelligent,...
, and Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
. His photographs mostly black-and-white, uses a pictorial language that takes its lead from early German cinema, and also from the Berlin art scene of the 1920s.
In 1988, Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour, OBE is the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and sunglasses, Wintour has become an institution throughout the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for...
arrived at American Vogue and signed Lindbergh for the magazine. He shot Miss Wintour’s first, then revolutionary American Vogue, November 1988 cover.
Lindbergh was the first photographer to bring together Linda
Linda Evangelista
Linda Evangelista is a Canadian model. She has been featured on over 600 magazine covers and has garnered work on numerous modeling assignments with companies, most recently with L'Oréal.- Early years :...
, Naomi
Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell is a British model. Scouted at the age of 15, she established herself among the top three most recognisable and in-demand models of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was one of six models of her generation declared "supermodels" by the fashion world...
, Tatjana
Tatjana Patitz
Tatjana Patitz is a German model and actress who rose to international prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, representing top fashion designers, campaigns, and collections, and who continues to model today.-Modelling career:...
, Cindy
Cindy Crawford
Cynthia Ann "Cindy" Crawford is an American model. Known for her trademark mole just above her lip, Crawford has adorned hundreds of magazine covers throughout her career. She was named #3 on VH1's 40 Hottest Hotties of the 90s...
and Christy
Christy Turlington
Christy Turlington Burns is an American model best known for representing Calvin Klein from 1987 to 2007. She has worked on dozens of modeling contracts with companies including Maybelline Cosmetics and Versace. Turlington starred in her fashion documentary Catwalk and Isaac Mizrahi's Unzipped...
on one shot, so kick-starting the whole “Supermodel Phenomenon”(with his legendary January 1990 British Vogue cover.)
He made portraits of Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
, Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
, Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling
Charlotte Rampling, OBE is an English actress. Her career spans four decades in English-language as well as French and Italian cinema.- Early life :...
, Nastassja Kinski
Nastassja Kinski
Nastassja Kinski is a German-born American-based actress who has appeared in more than 60 films. Her starring roles include her Golden Globe Award-winning portrayal of the title character in Tess and her roles in two erotic films , as well as parts in Wim Wenders' films The Wrong Move; Paris,...
, Tina Turner
Tina Turner
Tina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards and her achievements in the rock music genre have led many to call her the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the...
, John Travolta
John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, dancer and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease...
, Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
, Sharon Stone
Sharon Stone
Sharon Vonne Stone is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She achieved international recognition for her role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct...
, John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
and countless others.
When Lindbergh was put under contract to the American Harpers Bazaar by Liz Tilberis in 1992, she made her editor sign a seven figure check.
His first book, 10 Women by Peter Lindbergh, a black and white portfolio of ten top contemporary models was published in 1996 and had sold more than 100,000 copies as of 2008.
He has twice shot the Pirelli
Pirelli
Pirelli & C. SpA is a diverse multinational company based in Milan, Italy. The company, the world’s fifth largest tyre manufacturer, is present in over 160 countries, has 20 manufacturing sites around the world and a network of around 10,000 distributors and retailers.Founded in Milan in 1872,...
calendar, in 1996 and 2002. The latter, which featured actresses instead of models for the first time and was shot on the back lot of Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, was described by Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....
as "Pirelli's most challenging calendar yet."
Exhibitions
There have been dozens of exhibitions featuring Peter Lindbergh’s work around the world since his photography was included in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Shots of Style exhibition in London in 1985. Peter Lindbergh Smoking Women, first shown in the Galerie Gilbert Brownstone in Paris in 1992, travelled to Tokyo's BunkamuraBunkamura
The Bunkamura is a concert hall, theater and museum located in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, operated by Tokyu Group.- Venues :The four main venues are:*Orchard Hall: 2,150 seats*Theatre Cocoon: 747 seats*The Museum - Changing art exhibits...
Gallery in 1994 and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt in 1996.
The same year, prompted by the reaction to the 1994 show, the Bunkamura Museum of Art accorded Peter Lindbergh a retrospective, which broke the previous attendance records set by the Jacques Henri Lartigue
Jacques Henri Lartigue
Jacques Henri Lartigue was a French photographer and painter.Born in Courbevoie to a wealthy family, he is most famous for his stunning photos of automobile races, planes and fashionable Parisian women from the turn of the century.He started taking photos when he was 7, his subject matter being...
and Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...
retrospectives.
In 1997, Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof is a former railway station in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstraße in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as the Museum für Gegenwart , a contemporary art museum....
showed Peter Lindbergh: Images of Women, which toured museums in Hamburg, Milan, Rome and Vienna in 1998, followed by showings at the International Photography Festival in Japan in 1999 and 2000. Irina Antonova
Irina Antonova
Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova has been Director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow since 1961, making her the oldest director of a major art museum in the world...
brought Images of Women to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 2002, making Peter the first photographer exhibited by the Pushkin.
Peter Lindbergh was the first photographer to incorporate storylines into his fashion editorials. His iconic Martian story with Helena Christensen
Helena Christensen
Helena Christensen is a Danish fashion model, Victoria's Secret Angel, beauty queen, and photographer. She has also served as creative director for Nylon magazine, designed clothing, and supported funding for breast cancer organizations and other charities.-Early life:Christensen was born in...
for Italian Vogue in 1990 was the beginning of the narrative in fashion photography.
The Metropolitan Museum showed in the exhibition Models As Muse in 2009. In 2010, his exhibition On Street at the C/O (Berlin) counted 90 000 visitors.
The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
UCCA
UCCA may stand for:* Universities Central Council on Admissions, which handled applications to UK universities between 1961 and 1993* Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, a not-for-profit organization representes the interests of America's ethnic Ukrainians* University College for the Creative...
in Beijing, China exposed in April and May 2011 The Unknown Lindbergh’s gigantic installation, curated by Jerome Sans. It attracted more than 70 000 visitors.
Exposed in 2008 at Rencontres d'Arles festival, France. An evening screening has presented in Théâtre Antique: Manon a Mano with Paolo Roversi.
Filmmaker
Peter Lindbergh has made a number of films, including the 1991 feature length documentary Models - The Film, shot in New York with the Supermodels.Inner Voices (1999), a thirty-minute drama documentary examining self-expression in method acting, won the prize for Best Documentary at the International Festival of Cinema in Toronto in 2000.
In 2001, Lindbergh directed an experimental half-hour film for Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
about his friend Pina Bausch
Pina Bausch
Philippina "Pina" Bausch was a German performer of modern dance, choreographer, dance teacher and ballet director...
, titled Pina Bausch - Der Fensterputzer.
Shown off at Cannes in 2007, his latest film Everywhere at Once, co-directed with Holly Fisher, had its world premiere at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...
in New York. Narrated by Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
, this haunting, vaguely troubling film consists of refilmed Lindbergh photographs, many of them unpublished interwoven with excerpts from Tony Richardson
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...
's film Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle (1966 film)
Mademoiselle is a French - British drama film directed by Tony Richardson. The dark drama won a BAFTA award and nomination and was featured in the 2007 Brooklyn Academy of Music French film retrospective...
.
Influences
His works are not just inspired by Fritz LangFritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
or Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
's Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
, or Lang's Depression-era images, but by Lindbergh's 1950s childhood across the Rhine from the foreboding Krupp
Krupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
steelworks in the industrial Ruhrland city of Duisburg.
Books
- 10 Women by Peter Lindbergh Foreword by Karl Lagerfeld, Peter Lindbergh (1996), ISBN 978-3823814160
- Peter Lindbergh: Portfolio Interview by Dr. Antonio Ria, Peter Lindbergh (1999), ISBN 2-84323-108-6
- Peter Lindbergh: Stories Foreword by Wim Wenders, Peter Lindbergh (2002), ISBN 1-892041-64-2
- Peter Lindbergh: Images of Women Introduction by Martin Harrison, Peter Lindbergh (2004), ISBN 978-3829601436
- Peter Lindbergh: Untitled 116 by Peter Lindbergh (2006), ISBN 3-8296-0179-4
- Peter Lindbergh: On Street by Peter Lindbergh (2010), ISBN 978-3-8296-0506-9
- Peter Lindbergh: The Unknown by Peter Lindbergh (2011), ISBN 978-3-8296-0544-1
Awards and nominations
In both 1995 and 1997 he was named Best Photographer at the International Fashion Awards in Paris. In 1995 he became an Honorary Member of the German Art Directors Club. In 1996 he received the Raymond LoewyRaymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy was an industrial designer, and the first to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine, on October 31, 1949. Born in France, he spent most of his professional career in the United States...
Foundation Award. In 2005 he was awarded the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Photography.