Anders Petersen (born 1944) has been photographing the city of Rome since the mid-1980s. He has returned numerous times, and in 2005 he was invited for the Rome Commission, a prestigious commission that has previously been awarded to leading photographers such as Josef Koudelka, Graciela Iturbide, Alec Soth and many others. He returned in 2012, and decided to photograph his lover, Julia, who was briefly visiting him there. "Rome" begins with Petersen's portraits of Julia, which develop into a broader investigation of the city's lesser-known monuments and byways, its cars, bars and citizens, as Petersen revisits the locations he had documented seven years previously, acutely conscious of his own mortality. These photographs, mostly taken over the course of one week with a small, unobtrusive camera, constitute a fascinating culmination in Petersen's love affair with Rome.
Probably the best book by Anders in my library. It drew the following lines from me:
From within the walls Of the Eternal City His work offers a window Into a confused, shabby century. Infernal machines unceremoniously Burrow their way beneath Crumbling porticos and pediments. Paratroopers loiter wearily In ghoulish shopping arcades. Flows of detritus link Mouths to plates to bins to Teetering mounds of rubbish In hazy stretches of suburbia.
There are glimmerings, too, In the furrows of this black-and-white, Hysterically high-contrast universe. Womens' freckled bodies glow Like plated armour under neon light. A random pack of black cats Is found napping in a sunny meadow. Pictures in pictures. Trophies from a boxing past. Healing is a miracle! Life knits patterns like a granny Snuggled in her rocking chair. The photographer opens the hand,