Our Inspirations - Part 1 - Peter Lindbergh
*I can talk about Peter Lindbergh forever so this post will probably require the second part on its own*
This first post in this series is perhaps the most difficult to write. I was debating whether I should maybe leave Peter Lindbergh for my last post, but I very quickly decided that Peter should be first. There never was any other way, he always had to be first.
Peter Lindbergh is definitely one of the most famous photographers in history and his name will always be talked about whenever a topic of fashion or women in photography will be discussed. Just trying to write something about him I can feel the extraordinary atmosphere of his photographs.
He was one of the very first photographers I started to research, get inspired by, consumed by. I started my photography very late (especially considering the fact that in music starting later than age 5 is considered to be late) because I was about 25 (thankfully in photography age doesn’t really matter at all). Unfortunately, the reason I’ve heard about Lindbergh was due to his death in 2019. As soon as I saw some of his photographs in the articles talking about his life and work, my brain immediately felt familiarity. Not only because subconsciously I have seen some of these images before in various places but because these photographs felt like “home”. I cannot completely explain this FEELING but they felt right, like they were made to feed my soul.
Since that moment I ordered my first book of his work titled “A Different Vision on Fashion Photography”. That book literally changed me. It opened a door I was looking for for a long time, but I could never find. I felt like I finally started to dig deeper into the meaning of my passion for photography and now I started to look much further past all the technicalities of photography, and I was at last staring at the soul of it.
It is very difficult to talk about the feelings and emotions that cannot be fully expressed with words but it’s just like with love – it’s impossible to describe like a shape of a pear (to quote my favorite writer Sapkowski). There are things about his style though that can be captured by the words. Characteristics of his photographs, which when put together, transcend photography, and become art.
The core of Lindbergh’s work, and the most important thing to him is AUTHENTICITY. He despises photomanipulation and editing. He loves all the wrinkles, “imperfections”, creases, and true emotions of his subjects. To him they tell a story of the person in front of him and make them even more unique. Truth is of outmost importance to him and that is why he never edits his photos beyond basic conversion to black and white and some contrast adjustment. The only work of his that was edited was done by the magazine editors when they would disregard his direction.
“Heartless retouching should not be the chosen tool to represent women in the beginning of this century. […] When you can sign on to the idea that there cannot be beauty without truth, the answer is clear. How crazy and unreal is the idea of erasing all your experiences from your face”.
He hates makeup. He is in fact anti makeup. He does not care about the clothes either. It is all about the woman. One of my absolute favorite photographs of all time, where models laugh at the beach, was so controversial at the time for fashion magazines that Vogue originally deemed it “unpublishable”. Back in the day the model did not matter – it was their job to present the clothes and nothing more. Peter brought the humanity into models and made them the centerpieces in his photographs. He showed their personalities and as a biproduct of doing so he created the very first supermodels. But how is it possible to really show them in such a way that is authentic and still makes them the most beautiful? Well the answer is actually pretty simple, and it is… love. Peter said himself that he falls in love with all of his subjects. For the time they work together he is completely in love with them. Because of this he is able to care so much about them and tries to capture them like they are his entire world. That is also one of the reasons why women love to be photographed by him so much – they feel the outmost respect towards them from him and they know that he genuinely cares about them and how comfortable they are. Actresses and models would always happily admit that while all photographers would do more “beauty” style of lighting on them as they age, Peter would do the opposite – use more shadows, negative fill, and contrast to show their beauty in their experience as human beings.
