Image courtesy of Peter Lindbergh

Peter Lindbergh – Exhibition

Gagosian Paris is pleased to present photographs by Peter Lindbergh spanning thirty years, his first solo exhibition in Paris in more than a decade. Over the course of his career, Lindbergh has taken inspiration for his photography from modern dance, early German and East European cinema and photography, as well as his own personal history, resulting in a bold, elemental photographic language.

Image courtesy of Peter Lindbergh

With a minimum of artifice, spare styling, and openness to improvisation, he allows the innate character and natural beauty of his female subjects to emerge. In his editorial photographs for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Interview, and many other international magazines, Lindbergh replaced stagy, calculated glamour with a raw vérité approach, enhanced by his use of high-contrast black and white.

Image courtesy of Peter Lindbergh

Set in both rural and industrial landscapes, the women in his photographs are distinguished by beauty that is purposeful, self-possessed, and uninhibited. “I don’t think real beauty can exist without truth,” Lindbergh has said. “This idea disqualifies today’s excessive retouching.”

Image courtesy of Peter Lindbergh

Some images are presented on an unprecedented large scale: In close-ups from 1990, Linda Evangelista exhales a cloud of smoke, transforming her dark dramatic features into nebulous abstractions; in an image from 2000 Milla Jovovich is photographed in a dark turtleneck against a black background so that her elegant head and fixed gaze stand out in strong graphic contrast. Eschewing the established standards and artifice of fashion photography, Lindbergh has found artfulness in the conditions of reality, shot through with a grand cinematic sensibility.

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