Vita

Peter Hönnemann was born in Hamburg and began his career in Paris, where he made his name in fashion photography early on. Soon he was shooting campaigns for Valentino and Dior alongside editorial work for Vogue, Marie Claire, Elle and L’Officiel. Until the end of 1999 he lived and worked between Paris and New York, in both fashion and advertising; his monograph Hönnemann Photographs won the Kodak Photography Book Prize that same year.

From 2000 he divided his time between Paris and Hamburg and, alongside his commissioned work, turned to portraiture. His portraits focus entirely on the person: close, quiet, unguarded. It’s all about the encounter itself, and what arises between him and the sitter. Everything unnecessary is stripped away, and the less there is, the more it holds.

His collaboration with the artist Jonathan Meese in 2005 opened entirely different ground. Over three sessions of twenty-four hours each, the two shut themselves in the studio, chasing images of what it means to exist: excessive, restless, full of transformation, everything his pared-back portraits are not. The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg showed 103 large-format works from the project, and the catalogue appeared in 2007 as 24h. Peter Hönnemann fotografiert Jonathan Meese (Edition Braus). From 2013 he photographed the artists of Kampnagel’s Internationales Sommerfestival for eight years running, a new body of work each season, bringing his instinct for staging together with the depth of his portraiture.

Through all of it, his distilled portrait work has remained the core of his practice. His sitters include Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Gates, Rick Rubin, Billie Eilish, Stephen King, the Dalai Lama and many others. The Dalai Lama once remarked that he had a gift for capturing the essence of a person and translating it into an expressive portrait. His portraits have appeared in magazines such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Der Spiegel and Süddeutsche Zeitung; his advertising clients have included American Express, Air France, Deutsche Bank, Sony and Vichy.

Publications:

1999 photography book: Hönnemann Photographs
2007 photography book: 24h: Peter Hönnemann is shooting
Jonathan Meese

Distinctions and awards:

1995 individual exhibit – Grauwert-Photogalerie, Hamburg
1995 group exhibit – “Deutschland erotisch,”
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Arts and Crafts), Hamburg
1995 group exhibit – “Bildermode – Modebilder,”
Deutsche Modephotographien Fashion Pictures,
German Fashion Photographs 1945-1999), Kunstbibliothek,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Art Museum, National Museums Berlin)
1999 group exhibit – “Professionelle Photographie,”
Walter Storms Galerie, Munich
1999 Kodak Photography Book Prize for Hoennemann Photographs
2000 group exhibit – “Erotische Photographie,”
Kamera- und Photomuseum, Leipzig
2001 individual exhibit – “Am Rande der Stille”
(At the Edge of Silence),Kamera- und Photomuseum, Leipzig
2002 group exhibit – “Thai-Cong—My Parents,”
2002 Award in Gold in BFF-Jahrbuch (Yearbook of the German
Association of Freelance Photographers)
Triennale der Photographie – Kunsthaus, Hamburg
2005 individual exhibit – “Fragile”,
Photography Monika Mohr Galerie, Hamburg
2006 individual exhibit – “Bilder”,
Anna Augstein Fine Art Gallery, Hamburg
2007/2008 individual exhibit – “24h – Peter Hoennemann fotografiert
Jonathan Meese”- Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
2009 group exhibit – “Homage an Irving Penn”, Galerie Hiltawsky, Berlin
2009 group exhibit – “Berlin Now”, Camera Work, Berlin
2010 individual exhibit – “Deformer“, Hamburg
2010 individual exhibit – “Konnexion“, Hamburg
2010 group exhibit “Zeitgeist Becomes Form: German Fashion Photography” – Australian Centre for Photography, Sidney
2012 group exhibit – Fotografias de moda alemanas de 1945 a 1995”, Galeria do Torreao Nascente da Cordoaria Nacional, Lissabon
2013 group exhibit – “LYX”, Paris
2015 group exhibit – “Nudity”, Raum LINKSRECHTS, Hamburg
2016 group exhibit – “Anfangen Pt.2”, Elektrohaus, Hamburg
2017 individual exhibit – “Misbehave beautifully” Jonathan Johnson Gallery Hamburg
2018 individual exhibit – “Transmission” – Galerie Âme Nue, Hamburg
2020 group exhibit – “FSK 18” Evelyn Drewes, Hamburg
2022 individual exhibit – “Listen to Your Eyes” – PHOTOPIA Streetside Gallery, Hamburg
2023 individual exhibit – “There is another world, but it is inside this one.” – Barlach Halle K, Hamburg