A true master of photography, Peter Lindbergh has realized some of the most iconic photographs and now, in his early seventies he doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Lindbergh’s approach is spontaneous, yet his imagery encapsulates the distinct expressions of his various subjects. Peter’s images exhibit honesty and grit and his signature style is often replicated, but very few photographers can capture the ease of their subjects like him. |
FC Hi Peter, first of all thank you for your time. I know that you are travelling a lot: Los Angeles, Dubai, Miami, Rotterdam, London… Are you working on some exciting projects? |
I might have said that ninety percent of fashion photography, then or today, are meaningless and without any interest, except helping the fashion industry to sell clothes. Needless to say, that they’re a few wonderful exceptions around. |
“EVOLUTION IS ALWAYS MORE INTERESTING THAN REPETITION.”
PL I have totally changed my mind about Instagram in the last year. From being very much against the idea of sharing parts of your privacy with other people, most of them you‘ve never seen or heard of, somehow it gives you the possibility to share thoughts or experiences with people from very different places. I’ve randomly asked on a Saturday evening: “where are you?” and this has caused a surpising amount of answers from every corner of the world and I’ve understood for the first time the real force and beauty of Instagram. It reaches into the farest corners of the world in a very individual way and it is up to you to make it an interesting way to bring people of all sorts closer together. FC Do you think Instagram revolution has influenced photography? PL I don’t think Instagram has influenced photography. But it has turned every human being into a photographer, or better, it gives millions of fellow humans the feeling to be a photographer. There is often a great spontaneity in those pictures and let me say that the so called “real photography” can lern a lot from these images. PL From an interview we did ten years ago about “fashion photography as a form of art” you answered saying that ninety percent of fashion photography is trash, only five to ten percent could have been considerd as expression of art. Nowadays, considering Instagram, have you changed your mind? Has everything got worse PL I don’t believe that I’ve said “only ve to ten percent could have been considered as expression of art” because I’m not interested, neither concerned, with the idea of photography being art or not. |
I feel more and more, that it is about photographing this “magic space”, situated between the photographer and the subject he’s photographing and not about the “architecture” of faces. FC How are you doing nowdays? Do you have unrealized projects that you aim to achieve? PL Today I shouldn’t work as much as I do, because I’ve always thought that now, in this part of my life, I should have the time to reflect and to find out more about everything I’ve seen. But than, thinking about photography, there is so much left to do… Here is a link to a very big project I’m working on with Thierry-Maxime Loriot, a curator from Montréal who also curated the extremely successful Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition that has been visited by two million people kunsthal.nl/en/exhibitions/peter-lindbergh. It will be first presented at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam and travel around the world after, it is the first museum Rem Kohlhaas has built. Thierry and I worked together almost three years on it, researching images, photographs won’t be presented like a retrospective but through my passions and obsessions for the past decades. FC I know that you are having another flight, thank you so much Peter. PL Thanks so much Fabio. |