PIOTR TOPPERZER - PHOTOGRAPHY
The exhibition of Piotr Topperzer's photography is connected with our broader program Poles among the Danes. This artist, who hails from Poland, belongs to the elite of Danish advertising photographers. His photos, ones which are associated with the famous Danish design, have also in recent years won the attention of Poland's press. This exhibition also puts on display his second realm of activity, that of artistic portrait photography. His work can be viewed from April 23 to May 15 in the Palac Poznanski.
Piotr Topperzer, born in 1948 in Wroclaw, has resided in Denmark since 1969. He studied foreign languages at Warsaw University. Following his arrival in Denmark he studied advertising photography under Finn Rosted.
Topperzer has worked independently since 1977. He is the creator of a series of portraits of well-known Danes who have a non-Danish ethnic background. These portraits highlight the cultural and social potential of immigrants - this being a topic which, as Topperzer states - has not lost its validity. In the text of the catalogue that accompanies our exhibition the artist stresses, "through my portraits I first and foremost wished to show that we are dealing with people. And that they have much to offer us". The exhibition I am in Denmark, which is comprised of 41 works, was purchased by Denmark's National Gallery of Portraits.
The current presentation, one which was earlier held in the Gallery in Poznan as part of the Denmark in the Castle program, embraces two extents of the artist's endeavors. One of them is that of advertising photography. In this field Topperzer belongs to the cream of Danish photographers: his photos of the most outstanding achievements of Danish design (i.a., the famous chairs and vessels of Arne Jacobsen) are known the world over. The second field is that of his portrait photographs from the series I am in Denmark, and from his newest project, the photographic series called Portrait makers. Here the camera has caught Danish painters, sculptors, and graphic artists, who are portrayed as creators at work, i.e., at their easels, in their ateliers, or with the accoutrements of their profession.