From December 15th, 2022 until May 14th, 2023, Brussels’ Espace Vanderborght will host an exceptional photo exhibition: “Untold Stories”, the posthumous exhibition of works by the pioneering photographer, Peter Lindbergh. The Belgian capital will honor the artist whose works have earned him a place among the greatest contemporary photographers of all time.
Having toured several European cities, the exhibition represents his artistic vision that was built and nurtured through four decades of work, encounters and creativity. Every day for three years, Lindbergh spent his days and nights researching, editing, and assembling photos that would open up new interpretations and create a sense of surprise.
Brussels has a rich cultural artistic heritage. It’s remained a constant hub of activity throughout the city’s history.
Philippe Close, Mayor of Brussels
Thanks to the support of the city of Brussels and the collaboration of the Peter Lindbergh Foundation, these unpublished photos, videos and large formats will be on display for four months in downtown Brussels. “The city cultivates the unique art of a simple and warm welcome thanks to the atmosphere that only the people of Brussels can create,” said Delphine Houba, Alderwoman of Culture.
1. Beginnings
Known for his memorable cinematic black and white images, Peter Lindbergh (1944 – 2019) pioneered a form of new realism by redefining the standards of beauty. His honest approach set him apart from the other photographers as he prioritized soul and personality. Lindbergh drastically changed the standards of fashion in times of excessive retouching.
In the late 1980’s, Lindbergh garnered international acclaim and launched the careers of a new generation of models by photographing them successively in white shirts, with barely any make-up on and soon after on the streets of New York for the 1990 issue of British Vogue. Considered by many as the “supermodels birth certificate”, the now legendary cover launched the career of models such as Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Tatjana Patitz.
Lindbergh was the first photographer to include a narrative in his fashion series. His storytelling introduced a new vision on fashion photography. His work is best-known for his singular and revealing portraits infused with a strong influence from early German cinema and industrial surroundings of his childhood spent in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Since the 1970’s, he collaborated with all the major fashion brands and magazines including the American and Italian editions of Vogue. His work is part of the permanent collections of numerous Fine Arts Museums and his photographs are regularly exhibited in prestigious institutions worldwide some of which include the MOMU (Antwerp), MOMA’s PS1 (New York), Bunkamura Museum of Art (Tokyo), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow).
2. Later Years
2018 marked the beginning of a friendship between Bruno Pani (founder of the events agency Profirst and the social club TheMerode) and Peter Lindbergh, the iconic photographer from the 1980s to the present-day. Lindbergh revealed a human touch, capturing the fragility in the strength of models, marking his era and the emergence of the Top Models.
He collaborated with the leading glossy magazines of the day, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. He remains the only photographer to have captured the mythical Pirelli Calendar three times. Through his lens, the famous Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Helena Christensen, set the trend for a new expression of femininity. Raw beauty.
In September 2019, Peter Lindbergh put down his camera for the last time, but the power of his cinematic-scale remains forever immortalized in each of the images that literally and figuratively pushed the boundaries of fashion photography.
Before his death, Peter Lindbergh created a foundation with the aim of preserving his work. Since then, the Peter Lindbergh Foundation continues to promote his photographic heritage, notably through the Untold Stories exhibition, initially conceived in collaboration with the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.
Untold Stories will unveil more than 150 works freely associated by the author to create a “mise en abyme” and a dialogue between the photos, superimposing the person who discovers, the person who poses, and the person who is just passing by.
A monumental and immersive experience that combines barely known or completely unpublished photos with the artist’s most iconic shots. Photography in motion, vibrating with the energy of portraits through which Peter Lindbergh helped elevate fashion photography to the rank of art.
