Atlantica - 01.11.2001, Qupperneq 17

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Y
ou once said that you didn’t enjoy
taking photos of men. How do you
see women? Are they everyday
people, or superstars and goddesses?
You know, in the end they are all every-
day people. The superstar is only a
façade for business, self-promotion or for
some other purpose. All of it is just
behaviour. When you photograph some-
one, it’s best to strip off all of these atti-
tudes, and what you have left is just a
normal person that may even be afraid to
be photographed.
Yes, but you work with professionals,
people who are accustomed to putting
on a mask. Are you merely photograph-
ing those masks or can you manage to
reveal some of the real personality
behind a model?
There is always a mask. There is
always some “angst” to be pho-
tographed. Sometimes a photographer
can delve in such a way that he really
gets behind the mask. But maybe behind
this mask, you only arrive at a second
mask. So you never really know if you
have submerged through all the masks or
not. This leads people to ask, what has
your exhibition to do with “anonymity”
(the theme behind this year’s photo festi-
val)? And I answer that everybody is
anonymous because of what I said about
reaching one mask after another. I think
the real person is always anonymous.
- You mostly take fashion
photos, but sometimes
you have been
known to
undress
your
models. Is this done in order to reach a
certain form of beauty or art?
In society, of course it makes a differ-
ence if someone is nude or dressed. It
may be perceived that you are somehow
closer to someone when this person is
able to undress in front of you. So you
feel a different kind of closeness.
You often concentrate on the faces and
hands of women, very personal body
parts. Do you present your favourite faces
in order to break down the stereotypes of
beauty? Or are you satisfied with the
model agencies’ choices?
Very often you find someone special
yourself or someone introduces a model
to you, so in the end, I usually do the
choosing. Very often the agencies want to
see with your eye (the one of the photog-
rapher), so they find people they think you
would choose if you had the time to go
around and look for new faces. It should
not only be an agency’s choice, however,
because there are always trends in fash-
ion (like Gisèle Bündchen of the last two
years for example) and I think it’s a bit
boring to be bound to these trends. Years
ago, before becoming supermodels (for
example, when Linda Evangelista and I
began working), these women were just
young models and no one would have
recognized them. It becomes very satisfy-
ing to find someone, and to understand
and photograph them in a way so that
everyone envisions them like this from
that day forward.
- You have taken many pictures in old fac-
tories and on movie sets. Do you like to
show women in a work environment?
Ah yeah…This is not so much about
women at work. It is more about some-
one being in a place where there is
a reason to be. When you go,
for example, on a movie
set, it is very
easy…I’ve just
done the
Pirelli
calendar in Los Angeles, and we have
shot that on a kind of fake movie set.
Every scene resembles the backstage. It’s
not in front of a camera. When you see
the making of a film, I think it intensifies
the interest, to feel part of the process.
And at the same time, it’s a good excuse
for me because it doesn’t have to look
like a finished picture.
Would you prefer your photos to not
look overly finished?
Sometimes yes and sometimes no…
But I think that the reason for these kinds
of sets is that it really feels like some-
thing is just in the process of being done,
more than finished, closed and ready. It’s
much easier for somebody to be pho-
tographed if they can act in some con-
text. If you put someone in front of a
white wall, it is very difficult for that per-
son to feel and behave naturally.
Obviously you dislike studio portraits
and plain backdrops. How important is
the environment in your work?
The environment is very important when
you can use it to give the model some-
thing to do, as in a story or situation. I
like very much to create stories because
it’s an easy way to photograph – the
images come in relation to the story and
you can take a lot of different pictures. If
you have no story or just a plain back-
ground, everything becomes formal. It’s
difficult for a fashion editor to fill 30 or 40
pages with a white background, for
instance, as the only set. I think it’s diffi-
cult and it’s also very boring.
Where are your favourite places to
shoot?
As you can see from the pictures, my
favourite places are beaches. It is very
important, whether you work with
women or men, to make them feel
relaxed. If you are in a room, it becomes
very difficult to forget about the photo-
grapher and the camera. But if you’re
outside, everything becomes much
lighter and easier for the model. You can
walk or run around. If you’re in a studio,
normally the light is only good in one
place and if you go two steps to the
left, the light is not so good any-
more…and so the photogra-
pher says to the model:
“Don’t move. Don’t
move, stay
there!”
M o d e l P h o t o g ra p h y
Having just shot next year’s
Pirelli calander,
fashion photographer
Peter Lindbergh
talks about his vision of women,
beauty and fantasy.
PHOTO: JEAN-MARIE BABONNEU
INTERVIEW BY JEAN-MARIE BABONNEU AND ÓMAR SVERRISSON
A T L A N T I C A 15
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