Anders Petersen

Anders Petersen: Life is made up of photographs

Anders Petersen was born on 3rd May 1944 in the municipality of Solna in Sweden. He studied photography in Stockholm from 1966 to 1967 under his compatriot Christer Strömholm (1918-2002), who is regarded as the founder of modern Swedish photography. His first photo book Gröna Lund was published in 1973 and showed the colourful hustle and bustle of mainly young people in the amusement park ‘Gröna Lund’ (Green Grove) on an island just outside Stockholm in more than 50 black and white images. The volume was republished in 2013 as a special hardcover edition limited to 300 copies and as a brochure. In 1969, Petersen and his colleague Kenneth Gustavsson (1946-2009) organised an exhibition of photographs of Stockholm's slums, and in 1970 they founded the Stockholm photography group SAFTRA. Peterson took on a teaching position at the school of his old teacher and close friend Strömholm whilst completing commissions for magazines, and has kept a personal photo diary to this day.

‘Café Lehmitz’ made Petersen world-famous

Anders Petersen first discovered his most famous motif, Café Lehmitz in Hamburg, at the age of 18, when he visited the Hanseatic city to learn the German language and how to paint. It was only on a second visit in 1968, however, that he began photographing the guests of the small ‘standing beer’ pub on the Reeperbahn. These were people on the margins of society: alcoholics, petty criminals, prostitutes and pimps. The project ran for three years and was published in book form in 1978 under the straightforward title Café Lehmitz; the work is considered a classic of milieu photography and was rereleased in 2022. The most famous motif can be seen on the cover of the new edition: It shows a man with a naked, tattooed upper body, Rose, clinging to the chest of a brunette woman, Lily. The American musician Tom Waits (born 1940) chose the picture Lily and Rose as the cover for his album Rain Dogs. Anders Petersen and his Café Lehmitz are often compared to Robert Frank (1924-2019) and his epochal illustrated book Les Américains / The Americans.

International exhibition successes and awards

Anders Petersen has had various exhibitions in Europe and Asia; in Germany, his pictures have been shown in Berlin, Jena, Munich and Hamburg, among other places. For his series of pictures about closed institutions, he visited prisons, psychiatric clinics and old people's homes over a period of several years. In his photo reportages, the artist is primarily concerned with respectful contact with people, not with sensationalism, voyeurism or even exposure. Anders Petersen has received prizes and awards for his photographic work, including the Dr Erich Salomon Prize from the German Photographic Society in 2008.

Anders Petersen lives and works in Stockholm.