Anders Petersen on looking for the innocent child inside everybody, why questions are more interesting than the answers and the challenge of being ‘home blind’ when shooting the city you live in.
Anders Petersen was born in 1944 in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1961, aged 17, he went to live in Hamburg to learn German and to try to write and paint. Five years later he met the man who would become a mentor, close friend and his biggest influence, Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm. Inspired by one of Christer’s photographs, which he saw in a magazine he picked up in a barber shop, Anders began his photographic education, enroling at Strömholm’s school of photography in Stockholm.
In 1967 Anders returned to Hamburg where he began photographing in a bar called Café Lehmitz. Over a three year period, he produced one of his most well known and celebrated bodies of work. In 1970 he had his first solo exhibition in the bar with 350 photographs nailed to the walls and the work was later published as a book.
In 1984 the first book in a trilogy about locked instituations was published. The three books were about people in a prison, a nursing home, and a psychiatric hospital.
During 2003 and 2004 Anders was appointed Professor of Photography in the School of Photography and Film at the University of Göteborg, Sweden. He regularly gives workshops and has exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and in the USA. He has received numerous grants and awards since the seventies and in 2003 he was elected the Photographer of the Year by the international photo festival in Arles.
In 2006 he was shortlisted as one of four for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. In 2007 he received the special jury prize for his exhibition Exaltation of Humanity by the third International Photo festival in Lianzhou, China. In 2008 he received the Dr. Erich Salomon Award and in 2009 The Arles Contemporary Book Award went to his joint project with JH Engström, From Back Home.
On episode 117, Anders discusses, among other things:
Why it’s still no easier to form relationships
How he is looking for the innocent child inside everybody
His ‘bourgeois’ childhood and going to Hamburg at 17
How a picture he saw in a barbershop began his photographic career
His memories of his first visit to Cafe Lehmitz
The influence of Ed van der Elsken’s book Love on the Left Bank
Why questions are more interesting than the answers
It being ‘unbelievably important’ to retain a childlike innocence
His work in a psychiatric hospital and a prison
His new book Stockholm and the problem of getting ‘home blind’
Referenced:
“I was drawn to people who were honest in their dreams; in their wishes; in their desires; in their lust for life. And their energy. I was looking for their energy. I was looking for myself.”