Light Within. Vincent Peters

Vincent Peters greets the world with an open heart and an equally open mind. Through the objective, he creates dreamy worlds and stages movie-like moments. Besides the model, there aren’t any excessive details so that the photo could accentuate the beauty of the person who’s photographed. It’s no coincidence that the photographer prefers classic black and white photography – it emphasizes the contrasts and carefully balanced composition: the subconscious and conscious are interweaved. For Peters, his analogue photography is an opportunity to convey human contact that enables us to see both oneself and each other. Resulting in intimate, beautiful, and sensual portraits.

 “Everything is really about projections and, in some ways, photography shows traits of psychoanalysis. Every time I see a photo I’ve taken, I also see myself and the choices I made in creating that particular image. With the help of the camera, the subconscious is moved one step closer to the conscious, and this applies equally well to the viewer,” describes the photographer himself.

 He feels that we’re losing the value of human contact and that increasingly more of our digital age is about eliciting a reaction rather than establishing communication. “For a long time, the role of the artist was to push forward into the unknown. But relentlessly breaking taboos is a dead-end street that makes art focus on itself, today it seems as much important to find back to the authentic essentials’ of our emotions in observing and feeling things. Recreate the connection that is sometimes lost,” says Peters.

 One of the most important aspects of Vincent Peters’ work is the light or absence of light. How he uses light and shadow play a central role, with Peters able to choose what is revealed and what is concealed. Using an analogue camera, he captures his subjects with finesse. Although, creating an ideal human being on the photos is not the goal. For Peters beauty isn’t something superficial, it’s something that reflects the culture. The kind of inspirational beauty we see in his portraits can be found as well in romantic Hollywood films of the 1950s and 60s. The films from that era have set the aesthetic standards of how icons are represented, and it’s still relevant today.

 The photographer discovered the movies as a child when his father introduced to him Hollywood cinema as well as French new wave motion pictures. Peters was captivated by how films were able to tell stories and create certain moods through the light.

 Vincent Peter was born in 1969 in Bremen Germany but moved to New York in his early 20s and began his career as a photography assistant. After a while, Peters returned to Europe, and in 1999 he started his career as a fashion photographer. He has photographed international advertising campaigns for brands such as Miu Miu, Yves Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta. This list has grown over the years, with Peters working for major fashion houses such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss, Emporio Armani, L’Oréal, Lancôme, Nike and Levi’s.

 The exhibition Light Within is in Fotografiska Tallinn from 6th December to 16th February. Next to Vincent Peters’ other winter season exhibitions are Sea of Artifacts by Mandy Barker and Memoria by James Nachtwey.