PETERSEN, Anders - Du mich auch

Personal statement by Swedish photographer Anders PETERSEN

"I look at these pictures. Old photographs, taken in the late sixties in Hamburg and Stockholm. They bring back memories of kinship, fearfulness, undisguised curiosity and our solidarity. Photography was rarely the main issue. What counted then was meeting people and exploring different realities. The same things still count. Now I see the pictures from a changed perspective. But they link together what was then with what is now. My questions of then are my questions of now. I recognize them, though the answers no longer carry the same weight. So I continue to ask my questions. Be wary of: Nicely formulated principles and truths. Useless feelings of guilt and sins of the past or while we're at it, a photography resembling pretty adjectives. On the other hand, I like private diaries and family albums. I experience for the first time how a group can make an individual strong. I am surrounded by bar girls, petty thieves, dockers, Bob Dylan copies, criminals on the run, Vanja's old lovers, street sellers from Fischmarkt, housewives with bruised eyes, strippers in leopard-skins, legless war heroes, French pimps and the friends of Christer STRÖMHOLM. They all live and work in St. Pauli, and after a while I feel like one of the family." (© Anders PETERSEN)

About Swedish photographer Anders PETERSEN (b.1944)

Photo books by and with works by Anders PETERSEN