Prisons, Mental Hospitals, Dive Bars, & Renown Cities: Live AMONG Those You Photograph // Anders Petersen
The raw reality this photographer encountered to create images of people on the fringes of society including the homeless, ladies of the night, prison inmates, and those who were institutionalized has drawn controversy for its potentially voyeuristic and exploitative nature. But that’s not how he or fans of his work saw these images. To those of us on the other side of the debate, these photos show the human experience in a way that allows us to draw empathy for people who have been discarded by society and are often harshly judged for their differences. In his own words, “I really identified with these people and their situation, this group who were outside society. I respected them. I felt very strongly about them.”
Even though Petersen hadn’t created images revolving around the city of Stockholm itself, he had created a trilogy of books early in his career that revolved around very specific subjects in the city.
The first of these was titled Prison. Released in 1984, it involved trying to truly capture what inmates felt, along with an attempt to rationalize what the word freedom truly means. Petersen had himself locked in prison along with others to grasp what they were going through. As he explained it, “I’m not interested in prison, really. I was interested in the feeling of being locked in. It took a while for me to be accepted there.”
Through his time there, he found that freedom is a convoluted feeling. Those in prison feel a longing for it, while those on the outside never truly have it. We are all trapped in one way or another, it is all a matter of perspective.
The second book of this series involved documenting people living in old peoples homes. This book, On the Line of Love (1991), led Petersen to say, “That work made me feel very alive. To be close to death is a way to feel alive. A lot of people died while I was there, I think that twenty or twenty five people died during my three years working on that project.”
The project forced Petersen to ask questions about the deeper purpose of life and what his own meant. Through this work he came to terms with the fact that, “If you have visions, if you have a goal, then you’d better hurry up. It’s up to you. You make the choice to act, you can’t blame anyone else if you don’t.”
He continued, “You think about this when you walk those corridors, when you sit down with these old people. What became very distinct and present for me were the dreams, the secrets, and the longings that these old people had. It was like coming home to a family of children. They were so innocent, so vulnerable.”
The final book in this trilogy focused on a mental hospital and is titled Nobody Has Seen It All. Once again for this project, Petersen found that living among those in the hospital was the best way to break through and make deep meaningful connections with those who were being photographed.
“I had to live there, sleep there, together with the patients and the people working there. And they let me do that, because they had seen me there over quite a long period, and they saw how I was working, giving away photographs and so on, I always do that. Living and sleeping there changed my way of approach. I got closer. Because many things happen at night at the hospital. People communicate then, you can talk a lot with people. You see a lot of things. And of course, sometimes you can also take pictures. But many of the photographs I took there were censored, by the patients’ relatives and so on. When you take pictures in a mental hospital the result is always just the tip of the iceberg of the work you actually did there.”
Through his projects, Petersen fully embodies a photographer dedicated to his craft and the mission to create meaningful images around subjects that spark his curiosity. With those living on the fringes of society, it’s easy for people to make the claim that these kinds of photos are voyeuristic or exploitative, to which Petersen responds, “You have to really say to yourself: this life is interesting, these people are interesting. You have to stick around and see what’s happening. Sometimes you have to dominate the situation and really make clear that you are a photographer. This is a way to direct yourself. Pictures, like birds, never come to you, you have to move your ass to get them. You can’t just stand there and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m a photographer.’ You have to be in it and be a part of it.”
Petersen was fully in it when he created his most renowned work, Café Lehmitz, a photo project that focused on a bar in Hamburg, Germany. The bar was located in the red light district, and the images were captured over a three year period in the late 1960s.
The project took off when, on the first night, the bar’s customers grabbed Petersen’s camera and began taking photos of themselves. The drunken environment then opened up, allowing Petersen to comfortably take photos himself. The bar’s regulars, many of whom were ladies of the night and their clients, became collaborators in the process.
It’s these people on the fringe of society that cause others to point toward exploitation and voyeurism. On creating this project, Petersen claimed, “I really identified with these people and their situation, this group who were outside society. I respected them. I felt very strongly about them. I’m interested in being close. I want my pictures to ask questions. For me, it’s all about people, wherever you are. It doesn’t matter what kind of religion or tradition you belong to, or what kind of culture you have. When I go to Italy, or China, or Tokyo or Chile, wherever I go, it’s not a big problem to get close to people and have a good time, because they are relatives, all one big family.”
When reflecting on his first trips to Soho in the 1970s, Petersen said, “It was a different place then full of strip clubs and peep shows. Now it is very clean and fashionable, but some traces of the older Soho remain.”
Even with the significant changes that have taken place over time, Petersen was still able to capture that feeling in a book he completed in 2012 from photos shot over a three week period in 2011.
Part of what made it possible to give these photos an older aesthetic was Petersen’s commitment to exclusively shooting in black and white and, often, using a flash whether it was day or night. “I have nothing against color but, for me, there are so many colors in black and white. You can use your imagination more that way, put your own colors into the pictures.”
The images for this project were created in well known Soho locations, unknown clubs, burlesque bars, and private rooms. Petersen created this work through snapshot style and posed portraits.
He explained, “I never give people money but I offer them a print or a book as payment. Most people wanted nothing, they were happy to pose and they often had wonderful stories to tell. I found Soho to be a very open and friendly place full of generous people. Really, I learned a lot there.”
Although Soho has changed significantly, he believes it remains one of the few city areas where people of every age and character still mix freely, a quality he feels has vanished elsewhere.
Anders Petersen was born in the same rural area of Sweden as another of the country’s revered photographers, JH Engström. Even though there is a 25 year age gap between them, they built a bond over the work they had created and decided to collaborate on a project that focused on the region they both came from.
That book, titled From Back Home, begins with Petersen’s line: “I’ve returned to something that my body and emotions recognize.” His images focus on the people he encountered while traveling throughout the region.
Being as well traveled as he has been over the course of his photography career, Petersen has collected a large number of photos from a wide variety of cities. The project City Diary brings those images together in a way that is meant to find and display what those cities have in common.
These photos have been shown in several exhibitions over the years, most recently at the Hasselblad Center in 2024, where 150 photos taken over 60 years were brought together. “The images show slices of life with all its contrasts, the raw and the hard, the vulnerable and the tender. They focus on longing, and people’s basic needs and desires, love and community.”
Petersen stated, “I’m a kind of diary photographer. I try not to take pictures as I see them, but as I feel them. I’m interested in imperfection.” A new pressing of volumes 1 to 7 of this series, which showcases his passion for life in the shadows of cities around the world, is set to be released by Steidl soon.
“When walking the streets of Naha it was clear. This shy and caring tenderness in the ordinary, most normal situations. And everywhere. Standing often in a small barroom in the middle of old Makishi Public Market and drinking cups of Awamori. Looking at the colorful life in front of me, exposed to the exposed ones. Immediately a beautiful 98 year old woman approached me with a smile. She asked me to take her picture.”
In 2000, Petersen took part in a three week residency that involved taking pictures in Okinawa as part of a project called European Eyes on Japan. The initiative brings photographers from across Europe to Japan to rediscover aspects of contemporary life that are often overlooked.
Petersen’s life and work highlight the misconceptions people have about street photography. These misconceptions often come from projecting one’s own discomfort onto the photographer, assuming their intentions must also be bad. But street photography documents real life, it puts real history on display.
The things some people don’t want to recognize are part of this world whether they like it or not. Deciding that something is exploitative simply because someone shed light on it demonstrates a desire to keep the fringes of society in the dark. Everyone should have the potential to be shown in photography that depicts real life for what it is, and those who create images of these people should not be demonized for it.