"The Lightness of Being" by Peter Lindbergh.

If he could, he would have taken pictures of the Dalai Lama, Picasso and Kennedy. He believed that laughter had no value in portraiture. He loved the sense of mystery and loved to photograph in black and white. He appreciated color in the work of Mario Sorrenti and Paola Roversi, although he thought it didn't penetrate the skin as much as black and white. No wonder. After all, he grew up with all those American reporters like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Carl Mydans, whose work was the reason he himself began to photograph in black and white. 

He was Meghan Markle's favorite photographer, Donna Karan says he was part of her family, and Nadja Auermann says he made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. Although he photographed some of the world's biggest stars, such as Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren, he is probably best known as the godfather of the "supermodel phenomenon." In the late 1980s, he dared to do what few fashion photographers had attempted before - he showed models as they really were and made them more famous than movie stars. They dominated magazine covers and fashion for the next 15 years, never getting out of bed on less than $100,000 a day. Although there were some who were estimated to be worth $6 million per picture day.

It must be said that few photographers have had as much influence on the fashion industry and popular culture as Peter Lindbergh.

His photographs are regarded as an important part of the body of contemporary art. He has exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others. Now his work can be admired at one of the world's largest venues dedicated to contemporary photography - Stockholm's Fotografiska.

For the first time in Sweden's history,...

Since opening its doors in 2010, Fotografiska has attracted more than 500,000 visitors a year. It has become one of the world's leading museums of contemporary photography, art and culture and one of Stockholm's most popular attractions. 

Open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., it presents about 20 different photographic exhibitions each year - a mix of those by the best-known photographers and rising stars. 

Situated along the waterfront on the north side of artistic Södermalm, it occupies a 1906 Art Nouveau-style building that originally served as a customs and tax office. Today, the building is listed as a cultural monument. The exterior brick walls have retained their original appearance, while the interior has been converted into a two-story gallery. 

It is in its spaces that until October 15 you can see this year's main exhibition entitled Lightness of Being, which presents photographs from the entire scope of the vast career of German photographer Peter Lindbergh (1944-2019) - a man who changed the face of fashion photography.

In a new light

The exhibition at Fotografiska is the result of a close collaboration with the Peter Lindbergh Foundation, led by his son, Benjamin, who has long been involved in preserving and presenting his father's work, especially since Peter's death in 2019. Retrospective exhibition Lightness of Being opened on June 16 and includes more than 100 works by the artist, with no specific chronology. At the opening, Benjamin did not hide his excitement at bringing his father's works to Stockholm. - We hope this exhibition will shed new light on his artistic legacy. It is a tribute to his pioneering work in the field of fashion photography, which we hope will also attract the younger generation - He said in an interview with Vogue Scandinavia.

Personally, I think Fotografiska is the perfect place to introduce Swedes to Peter's work. The minimalism, simplicity, subtlety, sparing styling or melancholic mood characteristic of Lindbergh's photos is extremely close to the Swedes. After all, Scandinavian minimalism achieved worldwide status as a brand in itself years ago, becoming a modern way to break away from mindless and aggressive consumption. It's a philosophy aimed at optimizing one's environment so that it doesn't distract from the essentials. The practical ones, close to human needs. 

Lindbergh was against the mindless practices of advertising, magazines and social media. His comments on retouching and his refusal to succumb to the digitally enhanced glossy ideal helped move the fashion industry in a more positive direction. He was against Photoshop. He was annoyed by selfies. He was irritated by a commercial world that brutalized women. He wanted to tell stories, not replace individualism with mindless perfection. That's why he relied on authenticity and preferred streamlined portraits of natural beauty. He often turned down big clients, explaining that he couldn't photograph women in that old, traditional style. For Lindbergh, the concept of beauty was constantly expanding. She could no longer be described as a single blonde with blue eyes, or a sexy brunette. There was something new in the air. After the crazy 1980s, full of glamour, teased hairstyles and lifted busts, what he was proposing was refreshing and new. 

German heritage

Peter's unique work has influenced generations of photographers, designers and other creatives. Also on his loved ones, including his son Benjamin, who accompanied his father on many photo shoots, first as a child playing next to the set and later as a young assistant. Benjamin currently serves as president of the Peter Lindbergh Foundation and was instrumental in bringing his father's paintings to Sweden. Retrospective exhibition Lightness of Being shows all those elements that influenced the photographer's work - from industrial landscapes to coastlines, from science fiction to dance and 1920s expressionism. 

He was born in 1944 in Nazi-occupied Leszno to a German family. He was born as Peter Brodbeck. He didn't change his name until 1973 in Düsseldorf, when he started his own advertising business. When he learned that another photographer with the same name was working in the same city, he opened a catalog, chose the name Lindbergh, and the rest is history.

When he was 2 months old, the Soviet army invaded and his family was forced to flee westward, settling in Duisburg (Ruhr). The place where he spent his childhood was characterized by a strong dividing line between his uncle's green fields and the wall of factories nearby. His early years growing up in the heart of Germany's industrial region and the contrast between nature and urban civilization shaped his aesthetic. This is particularly evident in a memorable, minimalist 1988 ad campaign for Japanese brand Comme des Garçons, in which miniature models pose against a backdrop of large, grimy factory machinery. The campaign earned Lindbergh the status of a photographer of the present day, who goes beyond commercial fashion photography to touch on humanistic aspects. In his photographic stories, fashion has always taken second place to character, plot and environment. He used it to talk to and about women. He often laughed that the reason he works for the industry is because he gets commissions from it. However, he preferred portraits.

Strength for Change

When Benjamin was asked at the opening of the exhibition at Fotografiska what he thought created an aura of timelessness in his father's work, he replied: - The fact that he never followed trends. He has always remained true to his vision, without making compromises, is one of the reasons why his portraits, in my opinion, are timeless. After which he added: - I believe that the way he portrayed women - without artificiality or superficial filter - is still important in terms of how beauty can be defined today.

It's true. Peter Lindbergh has maintained his own identity. Both teenage supermodels such as Kate Moss and mature women - Jane Fonda, Charlotte Rampling, Julianne Moore, Uma Thurman or Kate Winslet - blossomed in his lens. Women having the courage to be themselves and not wanting to look perfect. The photographer was interested in ambitious, uncompromising and strong women. Such as the girls he studied with at the academy of fine arts. The kind that didn't wear gowns from Dior, but simple t-shirts. For him, beauty had nothing to do with youth. He believed that to have a real person in front of him, who wears his entire life on his face, is amazing. And rare.

Few people know that as a teenager he was a drummer in a jazz band, and rehearsed at local funeral parlors. He also played the bongo, and in his youth played handball in his favorite position of goalie. Few people know that as an aspiring artist he signed his works with the pseudonym "Sultan," and that all his original negatives are kept in a cooler at a constant temperature of 18.9 degrees. 

On the other hand, almost everyone knows about 1988, White Shirts and a breakthrough in his career after meeting Anna Wintour when she took the reigns at American Vogue. It was she who discovered his black-and-white, grainy, cinematic photographs depicting a group of natural models dressed in white shirts and photographed on a beach in Santa Monica. Wintour immediately commissioned Lindbergh to shoot for the cover of her debut issue, which featured Israeli model Michaela Bercu in a cropped sweater from Christian Lacroix and bleached jeans, smiling with half-closed eyes, turning her head away from the camera. These were the first jeans on the cover of Vogue, it was a real revelation of the time and was the most important photo of the 1980s. 

Success White Shirts showed how the boundary in the perception of the definition of beauty and femininity has seemingly shifted. 

Most people also easily recognize his iconic portrait, which appeared on the cover of British Vogue two years later, in which Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Christy Turlington first posed together in downtown Manhattan. This famous photograph cemented his legendary status in the world of fashion photography and set the tone for the decade to come. When the photo was seen by George Michael he said it was the most beautiful photo of women he had ever seen and cast five supermodels in his music video for the song Freedom! '90, solidifying their status. Funny, because Peter never met Michael in person.

Early years

Before becoming one of the most prolific photographers of his generation, Lindbergh studied painting in Berlin. During his studies, he traveled around Europe. Such was the wandering desire of a 19th century-style romantic. He first arrived in Arles, following in the footsteps of his master Vincent van Gogh's paintings, and then hitchhiked through Spain and North Africa. He thought two years on the road was a long time. He smoked marijuana, slept under the stars, and grew up. 

When he returned to Germany he completed his studies in Krefeld and lived to see his first local exhibition at Galerie Denise René. In the early 1970s, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he joined Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Hans Feurer and Stern magazine - the German equivalent of Life and Paris-Match. After publishing his first photographs, Lindbergh was inundated with offers from fashion editors from around the world, delighted by the spontaneity and reportage nature of his pictures. Further success brought him to bustling Paris. Soon there was a flurry of offers from the most prestigious magazines - Vogue, W, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and Harper's Bazaar, of which he became the chief photographer, so to speak, for many years. In 2015, he said he was the third most frequent flyer at Air France. It's hard not to believe it if he was able to work between Berlin, New York, Los Angeles and London, taking nearly 40,000 photos of 15 different models in seven days.

The art of storytelling 

The production momentum of Peter Lindbergh's shoot was akin to shooting and directing a movie. He could have a production level like von Sternberg's, or the simplicity of a random shot on the street. Using his own vocabulary, he gave viewers reality and fiction in a cinema-like narrative that no one had been able to emulate before. His silent mini-dramas introduced a new way of combining fashion photography and art. One can see the huge influence of the expressionist German cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, of which he was a fan. In many interviews, he reiterated that works such as. Metropolis Fritz Lang or Blue Angel starring Marlene Dietrich, had a fundamental impact on his further perception of the world. Just as Solaris, Mirror or Andrei Rublev Tarkovsky.

His 1990 shoot for Italian Vogue, combining elegance and romance in a narrative reminiscent of a Hollywood film, has gone down in photography history. The photo features actress Debbie Lee Carrington in the role of an alien creature alongside the beautiful Helena Christensen.

The idea came from a Skywatcher magazine that someone had left in the waiting room of the American Hospital in Paris. This was the period when Lindbergh was fascinated by UFOs and images of alien beings. The story about ET is one of the best photo stories ever published. 

For his next famous photo entitled Wild Souls dressed Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Helena Christensen, Tatjana Patitz, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Karen Mulder and Stephanie Seymour in motorcycle jackets, heavy boots and leather mini-skirts, then photographed them on deserted streets under the Manhattan Bridge. The title of the iconic photo came from the 1954 motorcycle movie, Wild (The Wild One), in which Marlon Brando starred as the original motorcycle rebel.

In time, Lindbergh tried his hand at cinema and directed several short documentaries, such as Models: The Film (1991); Inner Voices (1999), for which he won an award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2000; Pina Bausch (2002) or the experimental Everywhere at Once (2008) on which he collaborated with renowned director Holly Fisher. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in 2008, following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

He passed away on September 4, 2019 at the age of 74. The legendary photographer is survived by his wife Petra, first wife Astrid, four sons Benjamin, Jérémy, Simon, Joseph and seven grandchildren.

The director of exhibitions at Fotografiska, Lisa Giomar Hydén, believes that this is a milestone not only for the museum itself, but also for Sweden as a whole. The biggest difference is that technology and the internet has speeded everything up tremendously in just a few years. We take the instant transmission of photos and text for granted. As a photojournalist for 60 years, I well recall a different time when I would send packages of undeveloped rolls of film with hand written captions to editors all across the world. DHL and FedEx were vital for my international work, even the regular mail system on occasion. Then digital cameras and the internet came along, changing everything, and a lot more time had to be spent at the computer. Newspapers were the first to take advantage of the technology as they require a quick turnaround for news stories and photo quality was less demanding. It took longer for color magazines to adapt, the sort I worked with, who had to wait until digital photography improved. Online media didn't exist at all until relatively recently but it certainly didn't kill print media, as some predicted. It has long been our dream to exhibit Peter Lindbergh at Fotografiska, especially in such a comprehensive form as we have created together with his foundation - said Hydén, adding that Lindbergh has always been able to bring out the authenticity of the people he poses with an inexplicable aura of timelessness. Isn't the key to creating a great portrait just establishing rapport and trust? Lindbergh claimed that when you lose control of yourself and reveal deeper feelings and emotions in front of the man with the camera, something more poetic happens....

If you don't have plans for a September-October weekend, I recommend Stockholm and this "Lindbergher" timeless poetry, which can be enjoyed until October 15. 

59°19′4.38″N 18°5′9.69″E

Stadsgårdshamnen 22

116 45 Stockholm 

www.fotografiska.com/sto/en/