International Photographers' Stage: Anders Petersen (SE) in conversation with Henrik Saxgren
Experience one of Europe's greatest documentary photographers, Anders Petersen, on stage in The Black Diamond in conversation with photographer and author Henrik Saxgren.
Anders Petersen's world of pictures is populated by drunkards, drag queens, homeless people, fetishists, circus performers – people he gets very close to, who become friends and with whom he forms bonds throughout his life. It is partying, flirting and fighting. It is dark, melancholic, open-minded and poetic. Enter Petersen's raw and beautiful world when he visits The Black Diamond in September.
The recognisable and the vulnerable
From the start of his career, Petersen's position as a photographer has been stretched between a socially oriented documentary and the personal, subjective. It is in this field of tension that he has searched for his images. Over five decades, he has exposed the recognisable and vulnerable in the human encounter. Longing, exposure, the marginalised and what unites people are pervasive themes in Petersen's photography.
On stage, Petersen will be in conversation with one of Denmark's best-known photographers, Henrik Saxgren, who has described Petersen as a 'guiding star' and the most inspiring person in Saxgren's career.
Produce or exhibit?
As a photographer, Petersen has had to deal with an almost inevitable criticism for documentarians: does he produce or does he exhibit?
Whether the photographer is driven by a noble motive to bring about the betterment of those he documents, or whether he wants to entertain his audience, the photographer makes his money by showing others off. Petersen himself has said that a photographer always exploits his subjects, but that you only get something from them if you give something in return. The exchange that takes place in the photographic situation is never simple.
In this talk, Petersen will discuss how well you have to know those you photograph and how you can use both an insider and an outsider position to make visible the deeply human aspects that may not be seen from the inside.
How close is too close? Open-minded portrayal
"Cohesion. To be with people. To be part of the world. To be part of the family, of all of us.”
This is how Petersen answers when asked by Journalisten.dk what he longs for, and continues: "And when you have the camera, doors open for you, you don't even have to speak the same language."
But when the doors open and you can become part of a world, you can also reach too deeply into the environments you want to work with. Petersen experienced this himself when he was younger, and often ended up drinking with the drunkards he had to photograph. It led to a lot of fun, but rarely his best work. As he states later in the same interview: "I missed many good pictures because of my idiotic emotions."
How and when you can and must move in and out of the environments you deal with as an artist, Petersen will talk about when he visits The Black Diamond in September.
Participants
Anders Petersen
Anders Petersen has photographed people across society for more than five decades. In 1973 he published his first book "Gröna Lund" about guests in an amusement park in Stockholm. The following year he completed his education at the Swedish film school, the Dramatic Institute, in Stockholm. Since then he has published several books. In 2003, he was appointed professor at the photography and film school at Gothenburg University. He has won and been nominated for a sea of awards. In 2003, he was chosen as Photographer of the Year at the international photography festival in Arles (Rencontres d'Arles). In 2007, he received the "Special Prize of the Jury" for his exhibition "Exaltation of Humanity" at the Third International Photo Festival in Lianzhou, China.
Several of Petersen's works from the mythical series about Café Lehmitz with intense photographs from a bar in Hamburg in the 1960s can be seen in the Royal Danish Library's permanent photo collection exhibition The Camera and Us.
Henrik Saxgren
Henrik Saxgren trained as an advertising photographer in 1974 but quickly switched from advertising to reportage photography. Henrik Saxgren has, among other things, made reportage from the Soviet Union, the USA, Nicaragua, South Korea, the Philippines, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Czechoslovakia, Romania and northern Greenland. Saxgren's works have been exhibited at such places as ARoS Art Museum, Skagen's Museum, the Norwegian Art Foundation and the Danish National Museum of Photography. Saxgren has also won a large number of awards, including Photographer Of The Year, Denmark, in 1985 and 1988 and Dansk Fotografis Hæderspris in 2017.
