Press Release / FROM FASHION TO REALITY April 13 – August 27, 2017

Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung Theatinerstrasse 8 | 80333 Munich T +49 (0)89 / 22 44 12 | [email protected] www.kunsthalle-muc.de/en THE KUNSTHALLE MUNICH PRESENTS A MAJOR EXHIBITION ON PETER LINDBERGH

This spectacular exhibition about German photographer Peter Lindbergh (born 1944 in Lissa), one of the most inluential fashion photographers of the past forty years, features more than 220 photographs. His iconic images, with which he heralded the phenomenon in the 1990s, will be presented along with unpublished photographs and unseen material, varying from personal notes, storyboards, props, polaroids, contact sheets and ilms to monumental prints. His avant-garde images quickly addressed concerns of society in a world with established aesthetic codes: his pure black-and-white photographs have determined the course of fashion photography since the early 1980s.

Lindbergh’s predominantly black and white photographs that capture the leeting moment opened up a new dimension of realism in fashion photography, revolutionizing the visual idiom of the well-known magazines and fashion labels. Avoiding the artiice of fashion photography, Lindbergh was the irst to focus on the unique personalities of his models. Instead of beautifully dressed human “clothes horses”, he portrayed self-assured, expressive personas, from the femme fatale to the heroine, but also the female dancer and the actress. His oeuvre is characterized by portraits that radiate a certain lack of inhibition and physical grace.

Curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot – who previously presented “. From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” at the Kunsthalle Munich – explains: “This exhibition is not a chronological survey, but a narrative in which you discover the universe of Peter Lindbergh through his unique eye, his strong themes and his collaborations with artists like and Jenny Holzer. It also reveals the humanism found in his work, seen in a social context. It says a lot about his own values, his vision on ageism, beauty and femininity, on social issues and reveals the boundless creativity and imagination found in his photographs.” ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition “From Fashion to Reality” is an homage to Lindbergh’s multifaceted oeuvre from 1978 to the present day. The show has a thematic approach, marking his creative development and focusing on the passions he developed over the years. Eight different sections have been devised: “”, “Couturiers”, “Zeitgeist”, “Dance”, “The Darkroom”, “The Unknown”, “Silver Screen” and “Icons”

SUPERMODELS

Models like , , , and , among others, were young and unknown when Lindbergh photographed them in the late 1970s and 1980s. Later, their irst names became household names that rolled off tongues the world over. While the focus of inluential fashion magazines like Harper’s Bazaar or Vogue had hitherto been on the clothes, the spotlight was now being shone onto the women presenting them.

This section shows Lindbergh’s iconic pictures from the 1990s and is complemented with photographs from the recent reunion of the supermodels (published in Vogue Italia, september 2015). Lindbergh shows that twenty-ive years later, they have not lost any of their beauty and personality.

COUTURIERS

In 1978, Stern commissioned Lindbergh to shoot renowned couturiers like Yves Saint Laurent and hip young designers like or Thierry Mugler. From then on, he increasingly collaborated with the big names of the fashion world – German icons , Jil Sander, Thomas Maier, but also Azzedine Alaïa, Jean Paul Gaultier or Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. Lindbergh managed to disrupt the ixed codes of the fashion industry and made a reputation for their brands. His collaborations with twenty-ive fashion designers from various eras and the way in which Lindbergh helped shape the image of fashion houses is amply covered in the section “Couturiers”. DANCE

Frequently Lindbergh combined fashion photography with his passion for dance, one of his major sources of inspiration. He worked on a visual history of dance with series of photographs based on famous dancers and choreographers, such as Sergei Diaghilev or Georges Balanchine, Spanish dancer and choreographer Blanca Li and companies like the Bolshoi, ’s Staatsballett and the New York City Ballet. He also made a ilm called Pina Bausch. Der Fensterputzer (2001), on his late friend Pina Bausch, and portrayed Madonna dressed by Japanese designers in a tribute to the great American choreographer Martha Graham.

ZEITGEIST

With his humanist approach and his play on masculinity and femininity, Lindbergh subverted the fashion industry’s rigid conventions. Gender issues and political statements are the subject in the “Zeitgeist”- section. A series called “Give peace a Chance” shows the models in an anti-war- demonstration-set that he made for Harper’s Bazaar in 2004. Similarly, “A New Age” was shot for Italian Vogue in 2014, in close collaboration with American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer. Having drastically changed the standards of fashion photography in times of excessive retouching, Lindbergh chooses natural beauty, with as much emphasis on personality as on outward appearance – celebrating the elegance and sensuality of older women, like in his Pirelli-Calendar for 2017. In a 2014 interview, he declared that: “This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and inally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection”, believing that there is something more than standards of beauty and youth that makes a person interesting.

THE UNKNOWN

Lindbergh was the irst to use fashion photography as a medium of storytelling. Often resembling ilm stills, the momentariness of his photographs encourages the beholder to spin the story behind the scene. “The Unknown” reveals Lindbergh’s fascination with science iction and includes his famous 1990 series featuring the Danish and the actress Debbie Lee Carrington, which many consider as the pioneering story of narratives in fashion magazines. SILVER SCREEN

To some extent, Lindbergh’s stylistic inspiration has its roots in the esthetics of international avant- garde cinema from the 1920s to the 1950s: his settings are reminiscent of the engine room in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the cabaret in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel and the ilm sets of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds or Psycho. Moreover, time and again, he comes back to the raw industrial architecture that is familiar to him from a childhood and adolescence spent in , creating an intriguing tension between the backdrop and his models. “Silver Screen” shows these ilmic inluences on Lindbergh’s work.

ICONS

Often referred to as the “Poet of Glamour” or “Photographer of Truth”, Lindbergh considers himself more anti-glamour, as he dismisses all notions of social status in his images. Erasing hierarchy in his pictures, he captures moments of truth, celebrating the natural beauty and elegance of the person in front of his camera. The “Icons” gallery is presented as a visual journey through four decades of timeless images. He captured iconic igures of pop culture, from Kate Winslet to , from Eddie Redmayne to Christoph Waltz, from to Pharrell Williams, all with a powerful emotional appeal. LINDBERGH’S OEUVRE IN CONTEXT

Since much of it is published in short- lived print media, like monthly fashion magazines, some of Lindbergh’s work has faded into obscurity, despite its historical signiicance. Other photographs have never been shown in public. For this exhibition, Lindbergh opened up the doors to his archive, granting curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot unlimited access. Taking images from this vast collection, Loriot has added making-of and behind-the-scenes material to Lindbergh’s oficial oeuvre, thereby providing fresh insight into the history of photography over the last few decades. Additionally, ilm excerpts and interviews with collaborators, models and actors throw light on the artist. Lindbergh’s Models. The Film (1991, 52 minutes) will be screened, as well as interviews with , Nicole Kidman, and German supermodel , among others.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Known for his memorable cinematic images, Peter Lindbergh is recognized as one of the most inluential contemporary photographers. Born in Lissa (present-day Poland, then occupied German territory) in 1944, he spent his childhood in Duisburg (North Rhine-Westphalia). He worked as a window dresser for a local department store and enrolled in the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1960s. He remembers these years: “I preferred actively seeking the inspirations of Van Gogh, my idol, rather than painting the mandatory portraits and landscapes taught in art schools... .” Inspired by the painter, he moved to Arles for almost a year, and then embarked on a journey hitchhiking through Spain and North Africa. He later studied free painting at the College of Art in Krefeld and was inluenced by and the conceptual movement. Before graduating, he was invited to exhibit his work at the renowned avant-garde Galerie Denise René-Hans Mayer in 1969.

After moving to Düsseldorf in 1971, he turned his attention to photography and worked for two years assisting German photographer Hans Lux, before opening his own studio in 1973. Becoming well known in his native country, he joined the Stern magazine, just like photography legends , and Hans Feurer. In 1978, he moved to to further his career.

Back in 1988, Lindbergh garnered international acclaim and launched the careers of a new generation of models whom he had recently discovered, showing them all dressed in white shirts. A year later, he photographed Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Hamburg-born Tatjana Patitz, together for the irst time, for the legendary January 1990 Vogue UK cover.

It were Lindbergh’s photographs, and in particular this cover, that marked the beginning of the era of celebrity models and redeined the image of the modern woman. They inspired pop singer to create his iconic video for his song Freedom! ’90. In the May 2016 issue of the prestigious magazine Art Forum, Lindbergh declares in an interview with journalist Isabel Flower, that: “A fashion photographer should contribute to deining the image of the contemporary woman or man in their time, to relect a certain social or human reality. How surrealistic is today’s commercial agenda to retouch all signs of life and of experience, to retouch the very personal truth of the face itself?”

Lindbergh has worked with the most prestigious fashion brands and magazines since the late 1970s, including international editions of Vogue, as well as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar US, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Visionaire, Interview and W. In 2016, Lindbergh was commissioned for a record third time to create the 2017 edition of the Pirelli calendar, being the irst one to shoot it more than twice in the ifty years history of the iconic calendar. His work is part of the permanent collections of many ine arts museums around the world and has also been shown in prestigious museums and galleries. Among these are the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), as well as solo exhibitions at Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Bunkamura Museum of Art (Tokyo) and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow).

Lindbergh has directed a number of critically acclaimed ilms and documentaries: Models. The Film (1991); Inner Voices (1999), which won the Best Documentary prize at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2000; Pina Bausch. Der Fensterputzer (2001) and Everywhere at Once (2007), which was narrated by and presented at the Cannes and Tribeca Film Festivals.

Lindbergh is represented by Gagosian Gallery and 2b Management.

He currently lives between Paris, Arles and New York.

The exhibition “Peter Lindbergh. From Fashion to Reality” was developed by Kunsthal Rotterdam in collaboration with curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot and Peter Lindbergh, under the title “Peter Lindbergh. A Different Vision on Fashion Photography”. To accompany the exhibition, Taschen has published a high quality book of 472 pages.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Peter Lindbergh designed the window displays at Ludwig Beck department store on Marienplatz, Munich‘s main square.

Press ofice: Leonie Mellinghoff, T +49 (0) 89 / 37 82 81 62, [email protected]

Exhibition by

Premium partner Partners Media partners

Images (front to back): White Shirts: Estelle Léfebure, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz & Christy Turlington, Malibu, 1988 | Kate Moss, Paris, 2014, Vogue Italia, Giorgio Armani, S/S 2015 | Tina Turner, Paris, 1989, Stern, Azzedine Alaïa, S/S 1989 | Cindy Crawford, Tatjana Patitz, Helena Christensen, Linda Evangelista, , Naomi Campbell, & , Brooklyn, 1991, Vogue US, Versace, F/W 1991–1992 | John Galliano, Paris, France, 1996 Harper’s Bazaar | Dancer from Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 2012 | Angela Lindvall & Chris Dye, Warner Bros Studios, Burbank, California, USA, 2004, Harper’s Bazaar | , Linda Evangelista & Kirsten Owen, Nancy, 1988, Comme des Garçons advertising campaign, S/S 1988 | All images: © Peter Lindbergh (Courtesy of Peter Lindbergh, Paris / Gagosian Gallery) | Peter Lindbergh, London, 2016, © Stefan Rappo

OPENING HOURS daily 10am–8 pm; 30.6.: 10am–5pm every third Wednesday of the month 10am–10pm: 19.4., 17.5., 21.6., 19.7. and 16.8.

DIRECTOR Roger Diederen

CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION Thierry-Maxime Loriot

PRESS ENQUIRIES Leonie Mellinghoff, T +49 (0)89 / 37 82 81 62, [email protected]

PRESS IMAGES FOR DOWNLOAD www.kunsthalle-muc.de/press_area/en/peterlindbergh

ADMISSION FEES Standard: € 12 | Reduced fees: Senior citizens (60+): € 11 | Students (< 30 years) and unemployed: € 6 | Announced school classes: € 0,50 per pupil | Young people (6–18 years): € 1 Children under 6: free of charge | Family pass for 2 adults and their (grand-)children (< 18 years): € 22 | On Mondays: 50% discount on all admission fees (except on bank holidays)

GUIDED TOURS Guided tours for groups: Guided tours in languages other than German: Tue–Fri, 10am–9pm and Sat, 10am–8pm. All tours must be announced.

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME (EXTRACT)

»RE-ACT!« – HARRY KLEIN GOES KUNSTHALLE Art and Club: 4.5., 8:30-12pm: Visual artists create projections inspired by the exhibition, Meute live (Hamburg) and Stefanie Raschke (Harry Klein, Munich) provide a suitable sound till midnight in the cafe area with dance floor.

AFTERWORKKH every third Wednesday of the month 6:30–10pm: 19.4., 17.5., 21.6., 19.7. and 16.8.: Enjoy the exhibition until 10pm and linger on in the Café–Bar–Brasserie Kunsthalle till late. In addition to the exhibition tickets, a limited number of Afterwork-guided tour tickets in German can be purchased for € 7.

CATALOGUE To accompany the exhibition, Taschen has published a high quality book with over 400 images. Edited by Thierry-Maxime Loriot, 23, 9 x 34 cm, 472 pages, € 59, 99.

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