Soho was a"different place" back in the 70s, says Anders Petersen, “full of strip clubs and peep shows. Now it is very clean and fashionable, but some traces of the older Soho remain.” Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
Petersen describes his way of looking as being imbued with “a kind of poetic sadness”. You can detect this, too, in his Soho pictures: in the people he chose to photograph, the places he visited on his night-time wanderings and the way he uses graininess and high-contrast tones to accentuate his essentially melancholy vision Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
Born in Stockholm in 1944, Petersen is best known for his seminal book of intimate reportage, Café Lehmitz, which was first published in 1978 and is recognised as one of the classics of postwar European photography. For the Soho project, he spent just over three weeks in 2011 shooting in the neighbourhood. He began in March, when it was “too cold at night” and returned in June, when “it was the perfect mix of shop light and sunlight” Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
Petersen shoots only in black and white and often uses low level flash even during the day to add to the feeling of immediacy and rawness Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
He has two basic ways of working: the fleeting snapshot, of which he is a master, and the posed portrait. For the latter, he haunted the bars, clubs and cafes of Soho, befriending people he liked the look of and asking them to pose for him Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
“I have nothing against colour," Petersen says, "but, for me, there are so many colours in black and white. You can use your imagination more that way – put your own colours into the pictures”
Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
The photographs were shot in various famous and infamous Soho haunts, from the French House to Blacks private members’ club, as well as in several burlesque bars and dingy upstairs rooms where “models” entertain their clientele Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
The series is, Petersen says, Soho as a kind of impressionistic self-portrait. “My longings and desires are in there, too” Photograph: Anders Petersen 2012
