József Pécsi Library of Photography Anders Petersen Inside Worlds The exhibition is on the 3rd floor of Mai Manó House at József Pécsi Library of Photography Open to the public: 01-26. August 2007.
Anders Petersen: Inside Worlds · Anders Petersen

Anders Petersen: Inside Worlds

The Mai Manó House presents a collection of works of one of the most significant personalities of the European contemporary photography. For the first time, the exhibition will be organised in the Pécsi József Photo-Library, which is closed for the summer season.

Anders Petersen was the person, who made the bar called Café Lehmitz known for us. For three years he photographed the everyday life of the late sixtieth in the café turning it into a cultic place. Later he made several long-term photo series: he photographed in homes for elderly people, prisons, and psychiatric institutes. He started his career as Christer Stromholf’s student, and he regards this period of his life as one of the decisive ones.
One of the important characteristics of his working method is that getting to know the other person – his models – understanding their uniqueness is sometimes even more important than the realisation of their common story: the ready picture. He uses dark contrasts: thus shows us the often not present but always significant presence of light.
He is one with his pictures: sometimes they serve as his self-portraits; however they present us different people, situations, still lives.
His approach lacks distance: he doesn’t document the happenings; he photographs meetings, and thus presents himself through these personal fates. He never judges, but he shares with us what and how he can see – those things that existing mean for him. He shares the lives of those, whose face, loneliness and pain he shows in his pictures to define what life means for him. He makes us participants of intimate moments and feelings with the sensitively shown situations and faces. His strong pictures involve everything what life means for him. A Life, where nothing exists without desire, everything is intangible and strange and longing for the unknown.

Only the extraordinary talents can share these feelings with others, even if many of us feel the same way.

Gabriella Csizek

translation: Lilla Szász

photo: András Bánkuti photo: Róbert Kassay