Peter Hebeisen enjoys an outstanding reputation as an advertising photographer. Over the past three decades he has not only worked for reputed clients, agencies, and magazines but has also consistently pursued independent projects that reflect his “artistic position as a witness of our era,” as Hebeisen describes. He spent ten years working on a series of the major European battlefields of the 20th century, traveling over 40,000 kilometers from the French Atlantic coast to Russia. A contemporary form of “coming to terms with the past” (Peter Hebeisen), his works do not present us with horrors, suffering, or death. Instead, drawing on the tradition of landscape painting, he show us sites steeped in history, Verdun, Guernica, Sarajevo, Stalingrad, and others, which are today peaceful places. In order to replicate the position of the commanding general, the camera was set three meters above the ground. Hebeisen’s profile of these European Battlefields confronts us with the memory of the shattering events that unfolded at these sites of war and commemorates the historical experience they inherently contain. We are offering two of Peter Hebeisen’s most moving images—either individually or together—as Edition Hatje Cantz: large-format pigment prints on high-quality, archival Hahnemühle inkjet paper.
