Anders Petersen immersed himself in Hamburg’s nightlife and counterculture from the age of 18. He became a regular guest at the Lehmitz café, from which he drew the themes, settings and models for his first series of photographs, which won him immediate recognition and has since become emblematic of all future developments in his work.

An early student of Christer Strömholm, the greatest Swedish photographer of the time, Anders Petersen shares with him a similar approach to the world and a similar form of aesthetics, essentially that of black-and-white photography with the sharpness and dynamism of the snapshot, but also a respect and concern for the other, fundamental when it comes to portraiture, another major theme common to both photographers.