Peter Berlin: ‘70s Nostalgia

It’s increasingly common for readers of L’Oeil to call our attention on photographers, collections, forgotten and lesser-known or even unknown images. That’s the case this week with Eric Smith from San Francisco. Here’s the email he sent us.

“I am writing on the suggestion of Arthur Tress regarding the Photographer PETER BERLIN. Arthur thought that you might be interested in PETER’s work. My name is Eric Smith. I live in San Francisco (as well as Peter Berlin).

I am his best friend and have taken on the daunting task of organizing and trying to preserve his

archive of vintage prints as well as thousands of self portrait negatives, slides and video tapes.

Peter is now 72. Living in San Francisco. He lives a very quiet life, but is full of stories about

“the good old days” in the 70’s… in New York, Fire Island, Paris, Rome, San Francisco and Germany.

He is truly the originator of the “SELFIE”! He was the Photographer, the model, the stylist and the clothing designer..

all in one. He turned the camera on himself and the result is a vast archive of thousands of self portrait photographs

and video that capture the sexual energy of the time in his self creation PETER BERLIN.

There is also BARON ARMIN HAGEN FREIHERR von HOYNINGEN-HUENE (his birth name)..

(yes… of the same family lineage as Hoyningen-Huene the famed Hollywood photographer and lover of HORST)

Today.. Peter (or Armin)… still picks up his camera…. mostly pointing it to the outside world that he

sees, and sometimes on rare occassion… an older Peter Berlin returns to self portraiture.

These images are very compelling.

There was a documentary done in 2005 THAT MAN PETER BERLIN.

http://www.thatmanpeterberlin.com

And a website that a friend had created some years back which Peter does not manage.

http://www.peter-berlin.com/photos.html

and images: http://www.queer-arts.org/berlin/index.html

Peter was also very close friends of Robert Mapplethorpe (before and after he became famous)…

and Robert is one of the only outside photographers to have photographed Peter.

A clip from the Documentary re: Mapplethorpe

http://vimeo.com/16870413
Attached are a few images of PETERS SELF PORTRAITS:

Double exposures, Solo and Hand Painted Photos, collages, drawings etc.”

In the early 1970s, Berlin moved to San Francisco and became a fixture on the streets with his highly suggestive clothing and constant cruising. He collaborated with friend Richard Abel on a 16 mm hard-core porn film entitled Nights in Black Leather (1973) in which he played the lead role. Berlin’s poster for the film helped make Nights in Black Leather an underground hit.

As a follow-up, Berlin directed, produced, wrote, and starred in That Boy (1974), another successful film. He also made four short films in the mid- to late-1970s, which were primarily sold as 8 mm “loops” by mail order

n 2005, filmmaker and writer Jim Tushinski directed and co-produced (with Lawrence Helman), the feature-length documentary That Man: Peter Berlin, which began a resurgence of interest in Berlin’s works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Berlin

Eric Smith

_{UPCOMING EXHIBITION}
_{Peter Berlin}
_{Fall 2015}
_ClampArt
_{531 West 25th Street}
_{Ground Floor}
_{New York City, 10001}
_{+1 646.230.0020}
_{[email protected]}
_{http://clampart.com/}