Anders Petersen: Close Distance
Marvelli Gallery, New York
November 23, 2004 - January 31, 2005
Marvelli Gallery presents the first comprehensive exhibition of important Swedish photographer Anders Petersen in the United States. Anders Petersen exhibit an installation from the book Close Distance (2002) together with prints from the book Nobody Has Seen Everything (1995). In the back room there is a selection of rare vintage prints from the book Café Lehmitz (1978).
Café Lehmitz, the title of Anders Petersen’s first book, is a tavern in Hamburg where the photographer spent time at the end of the sixties. Petersen frequented this bar in which all conventions are suspended, and in which a raw life, full of humor and despair, takes place: a rough place and a kind of home at the same time. Café Lehmitz is a blunt, merciless book about life outside the bourgeoisie, in the windswept, unprotected zone where the only thing that counts is who someone really is.
Several books followed Café Lehmitz: among them, Nobody Has Seen Everything (1995), a book about about people in a psychiatric clinic. In collaboration with individual patients, Anders Petersen staged scenes about the lost and abysmal aspects of existence in which depression and euphoria both have their place.
More recently, in the book Close Distance, Anders Petersen’s work has developed increasingly into a diary. His photographs reveal his close proximity to people, his “hypnotic intimacy” with them. These are not pictures of safe, balanced people, but images of compulsion, longing, aggression and sexuality, with the laughter and tears of despair.
A key figure of European photography, Anders Petersen is a photographer emblematic of a type of social photography where the total involvement of the author with his subject makes a militant work. Petersen aims to show the hidden aspects of human nature. Anders Petersen’s work belongs in the ranks of Ed van der Elsken, Nan Goldin and Daido Moriyama.
ANDERS PETERSEN
Born in Stockholm in 1944, Anders Petersen trained with famous Swedish photographer Christer Stromholm and then carried on his studies at the Cinema University and at the Dramatiska Institute in Stockholm between 1973 and 1974. In 1978, the publication of Café Lehmitz, marked the beginning of his carreer. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in Antwerp, Arles, Evry, Gothenborg, Hamburg, Helsinki, Herten, Istanbul, Karlsruhe, Karlstad, London, Malmo, Nancy, Nice, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Turin and other places. He has participated in many group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has published several books, among them: Café Lehmitz (Shirmer/Mosel, Munich, 1978); Fangelse (Prison) (Norstedts, 1984); Ragang till Karleken (Boundary to Love) (Norstedts, 1991); Ingen Har Sett Allt (Nobody Has Seen Everything) (Legus, 1995); Anders Petersen - Photographs 1966-96 (Journal, Stokholm, 1997); Du Mich Auch (Journal, Stokholm, 2002); Close Distance (Journal Stockholm, 2002); Ich Dich Lieben, Du Mich Auch (Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2002). His work is included in important public collections, such as: Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg; Bibliotheque National, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Det Nationale Fotomuseum, Copenhagen; among others.
MARVELLI GALLERY
526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.marvelligallery.com
