APT GALLERY, LONDON

'THEN AND THERE, HERE AND NOW'

April 2010

Peter Anderson's early work records a rarely-seen alternative '80s. Working closely with his subjects - many of whom have since become household names - his photographs capture the energy of an era when music, fashion and politics first collided. It is a time that is still deeply influential today.

Anderson's huge, five foot by four foot photographic prints currently sell alongside works by Warhol, Basquiat and Banksy. They reflect a fascination with what is now called "Urban Art" that started when the Royal College funded his first trip to New York, where he made iconic images of early hip-hop street style.

As well as exhibiting photographs that stretch from the early 80s to today, Anderson will be out on the streets of Deptford in an interactive element of the exhibition that will see him making images with young people who live locally - street style still reflects the urban attitude of the 80s. He will then work with them in the exhibition's specially built "black cube" - the dark room where Anderson will demonstrate his "moment of magic" when the photograph first appears. He is one of the few photographers who still uses the dark room himself, working off industrial enlargers and custom made equipment to produce his massive hand made prints.

Then and There, Here and Now includes portraits - some never before seen - made while Anderson was a staff photographer at New Musical Express. The subjects represent a Who's Who of music, including Madonna, Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, Tom Waits, Run DMC, Marvin Gaye, Paul Weller and Blur's Damon Albarn. A young Bono stands with fists raised, ready to take on the world as it turned out. The Clash's late Joe Strummer gazes intently into the lens in a haunting portrait taken on London train tracks.

Anderson's work is concerned with energy, often translated into movement. Far from the careful, artful poses that are often characterise the image-conscious 80s, these spontaneous shots reveal the sheer vitality of the era. In retrospect it becomes a blur of ideas.

From music, Anderson moved on to other areas. His portraits of film directors and actors, including Lindsay Anderson, Robert Altman and John Hurt have been the subject of an exhibition. His shots of one of his heroes, J.G.Ballard, presage a Ballardian interest in the car as metaphor. Frieze magazine described a previous Anderson exhibition as "a passionate exploration of the world of high performance cars in which landscape, individuals and vehicles were joined in religious ecstasy." Some of this work will be shown at Then and There, Here and Now, together with more recent work that spans powerful portraits of young men serving in the armed forces, and photography of found objects made directly on old Devere and Lietz enlargers, in the experimental spirit of early art photography, characterised by Man Ray.

The Observer's music writer Paul Morley, Anderson's colleague at NME in the '80s, has written the introduction to the accompanying exhibition publication.