Anders Petersen

Swedish photographer, born in 1944. Studied in the orbit of Christer Strömholm and became known above all for *Café Lehmitz* (1978), one of the defining photobooks of late twentieth-century European documentary photography.

Main themes: intimacy, marginal lives, bars and streets, institutions, loneliness, desire, belonging, and the unstable boundary between tenderness and social precarity. Representative work examples: *Café Lehmitz* (photographed 1967–70, published 1978), later series in prisons, psychiatric institutions, and city diaries are central because they show how Petersen built a documentary language from proximity, repetition, and emotional exchange rather than detached observation. Technique / formal traits: raw black-and-white, close range, strong flash or available-light intimacy, frequent physical nearness to subjects, and a sequencing practice in which individual pictures gain force through their relation to one another in books. Why this method was chosen: Petersen has repeatedly framed photography as a way to reach what lies behind surface and to look for what people share rather than what separates them. This helps explain the emotional and relational quality of the work, which depends on trust and long immersion rather than on event-driven reportage. Historical context: his work belongs to postwar European documentary photography, especially the period when personal photobooks and long-form social engagement were becoming decisive alternatives to magazine photojournalism. In that setting, Petersen’s work helped define an intimate documentary mode distinct from both classic humanism and objective reportage.

ICP’s monograph note is useful because it frames Petersen’s whole career through the intimacy, method, and thinking that made his books and diary-like projects internationally influential. The 1854 interview is especially valuable for reception because it shows how *Café Lehmitz* came to be understood not just as social record but as one of the most revered photobooks in European photography. Later gallery and publisher framing continues to treat Petersen as a crucial figure in the history of the photobook and of emotionally involved documentary photography.