Death of photographer Peter Lindbergh

On 3 September 2019, the German photographer Peter Lindbergh (real name Peter Brodbeck) passed away in Paris, at the age of 74.

Peter Lindbergh, fashion photographer

One of the great names of fashion photography has gone: Peter Lindbergh.

Born in Germany, in Lissa (now in Poland) in November 1944, he studied at the Berlin Academy of Arts, then at the Krefeld School of Art. It was after settling in Düsseldorf that he turned to photography, working as Hans Lux's assistant.

he was a commercial photographer with no ambition, but a very human type. He showed me everything […] Working with him was very important to me.

Peter Lindbergh

In 1973, he opened his own studio and quickly became a prominent advertising photographer in Germany. A few years later, he moved to Paris.

Multiple inspirations

Peter Lindbergh's work is remarkable for its different sources of inspiration and its approach to fashion photography. More interested in models and their personalities than in their image, his work is characterised by a minimalist, lightly retouched approach — in a world where excessive retouching is the norm.

Estelle Lefébure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz and Christy Turlington (1988)
Photo Courtesy of Peter Lindbergh, Paris

His sources of inspiration are documentary photographers and photojournalists such as Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Garry Winogrand, with a classical grounding in André Kertész, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.

He passed away at the age of 74, in Paris.

Peter Lindbergh's work in detail

Website: http://www.peterlindbergh.com/. Main models: Estelle Lefébure, Karen Alexander, Rachel William, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford.