Anders Petersen

Born in Stockholm in 1944, he set out at the age of 18, on his own, to discover the world, beginning in Hamburg, Germany. There he encountered a wild nightlife culture that was incredibly exciting and completely different from his fairly stable upbringing in Sweden. He soon became friends with prostitutes, transvestites, alcoholics and drug addicts and adopted a love of nightlife and people living outside the confines of the normally accepted society.

After seeing a photograph of Christer Strömholm (a picture of a cemetery at night with dark footprints in the snow), Petersen went back to Sweden to meet and study photography with Strömholm between 1966 and 1968. Then he returned to Hamburg, where he for several years and many many late nights took the photos that became his first book, Café Lehmitz.

Since then, he has published more than 20 books, almost all of which feel like personal diaries about his experiences with people and places found only in slightly more shady areas of cities or in the darkness of night.