Peter Lindbergh

Peter Lindbergh is one of the world's most famous fashion photographers. But can one in fact pigeonhole Peter Lindbergh's work into the relatively narrow category of fashion photography? Throughout the 20th century, fashion and art have not only exchanged forms and ideas, but have also profoundly influenced each other. ?Fiat modes, pereat ars?-?Let there be fashion-down with art.? It was with this provocatively ironic commentary on the relationship of art to fashion that Max Ernst cast doubt as early as 1919 on the centuries-old practice of drawing a definite distinction between art and everyday culture, between ?high and low?. Especially the functional aspect of fashion was until more recent times the thorn in the side of those who postulate the autonomy of the fine arts. Only in the works of those contemporary artists who mix their genres has the line of demarcation between fashion and art begun to blur. The Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake was already designing sculptural clothing in the 1980s. Artist photographers like Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and Hiroshi Sugimoto undertook commissions from fashion houses. The installations and performances of Sylvie Fleury and Vanessa Beecroft make direct reference to the glamorous world of fashion.\n\nFashion photography holds a special position in the dialogue between art and fashion: ?While on the one hand it is able to create in the public eye an image of fashion in the truest sense of the word, to conjure up the moods, attitudes and, indeed, the whole style of life in which the particular fashion is worn, it is, on the other hand, always under pressure to present fashion as merchandise in an optimum and sales-promoting manner.? (Bernd Skupin)\n\nAs early as the pre- and post-war period there were rebels among the fashion photographers who couldn't care less about the fashions they were commissioned to photograph. For photographers like Erwin Blumenfeld, Clifford Coffin and Platt Lynes, fashion was merely an opportunity to create their own visions. It is precisely in this tradition that Peter Lindbergh stands: ?In my case, essentially everything is fictitious?, he once said in an interview, ?because then you don't get bogged down in logic or responsibility.? Instead of the ideal image, Lindbergh brought the model's personality to the fore. ?Only if a person's soul appears in the photo do I as the photographer feel I have achieved what I wanted.?\n\nKlaus Honnef has written a highly informative essay on Lindbergh's fascinating pictorial language, a language that blends the boundaries between fashion, portrait, nude and landscape photography. He convincingly demonstrates how ?Lindbergh's complex images render obsolete the conventional lines of separation between reality and fiction, between fiction and document, between document and art, between art and professional photography.?