Peter Lindbergh was the only German in the select group of photographers who have found international acclaim in the worlds of fashion and advertising. His black and white photographs are highly distinctive. His snapshot of models in white shirts was named the best photograph of the 1990s by Vogue magazine. But few people know who Peter Lindbergh actually was. Peter Lindbergh was inspired by expressionist German films of the 1920s and the free dance of that era. He combined avant-garde aesthetics and a down-to-earth stance to create something new and distinctive – what he called a “verité approach.” Peter Brobeck, as he was then, was born in today’s Poland in 1944 and grew up in the Ruhr region after being forcibly displaced. He started off working as a shop window dresser, but then – more than 40 years ago – he bought a cheap secondhand camera to take snaps of his brother’s children and discovered his love of portraiture.
His first pictures appeared in the cult magazine Twen and in Germany’s national news magazine “Stern.” Then suddenly international magazines such as Vogue, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair became interested in the German view. We talk about Peter Lindbergh with film director and photographer Wim Wenders and photographer Jim Rakete.
Documentary made by DW.
