Bernardo Peters Velasquez
39 artworks by Bernardo Peters Velasquez.
Last artwork was added this year.
Even as a child, I was fascinated by photography. As a ten-year-old in the 1960s, I travelled around with an old Adox folding camera. Back then, a quick glance at the sky replaced the light meter, aperture 8, 1/125 - it usually worked.
As a student, I bought a second-hand SLR camera of the now forgotten brand "Kowa" from my first self-earned tutor's salary, learnt how to develop film and enlarge photos. I was fascinated by the pictures of Ansel Adams, Andras Feininger and Henri Cartier-Bresson. And soon my love of photography and (photo) journalism outweighed my interest in studying chemistry.
The deciding factor was a fellow student who, in the "wild" 1970s, brought me on as a freelance photographer for "Hauptstraße", Germany's first neighbourhood newspaper, which was produced in Hamburg with little money and a lot of idealism. That was the first step towards my future career. I completed a traineeship at a daily newspaper and eventually became a newspaper editor.
But apart from the daily news routine, I had retained my penchant for details, for moments and situations and for my North German homeland - the very things that are always reflected in my photographs.
Today, after retiring from active journalism, I am once again devoting myself to my real profession, photography.
