City Diary #5

Since the 1960s Anders Petersen has traveled extensively and photographed life beyond the margins of polite society for his acclaimed City Diaries. Petersen's is an indiscriminate and intensely empathetic eye, one shaped by a fundamental connection with those he photographs-"To me, it's all about people ... what they do, what they believe, their dreams, hopes, visions and virtues." Petersen's subjects, a world including prostitutes, transvestites, alcoholics and night-time lovers-intimacy and conflict, joy and melancholy, clarity and ambiguity in equal measure-reveal his passion to identify and engage with subcultures and "life in the shadows," not merely to document them. To discover the gritty in the beautiful and the beautiful in the gritty, in impressionist images of deep blacks and stark contrasts which compellingly avoid cliché. City Diaries #4-#7 are the latest chapters in Petersen's ongoing series, the first of which received the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook of the Year Award in 2012.