How to capture Tina Turner’s soul: Peter Lindbergh’s son on his father’s bond with the singer

In 1989, Tina Turner’s manager, Roger Davies — who also managed the careers of Olivia Newton-John, Cher, Janet Jackson, Joe Cocker, Sade, and Pink — struggled to get Peter Lindbergh, then one of the most sought-after photographers in the world, to pick up the phone. At least that’s what can be deduced from one of the original letters included in Tina Turner by Peter Lindbergh, a book that gathers the best images (contact sheets included) from all the memorable photo sessions that did eventually take place.

Lindbergh replied with a handwritten note, full of slow, measured sentences, in which only at the very end — in a mischievous postscript — he finally agreed to do a shoot in Paris with the woman who by then was once again a global pop and rock star.

Again, because between 1976 — the year she finally broke not only personally but also professionally from her abusive husband, the famous Ike whose surname she had taken — and 1984, Tina Turner went through years of hardship and obscurity: buried in debt, she spent that period touring hotel circuits until, a decade later, she scored her first solo No. 1 with What’s Love Got to Do With It, the title track of the album that would ultimately earn her a Grammy.

Her return to the spotlight coincided with a new image that highlighted her rock-and-roll edge and sensuality, a look that only grew stronger through the decade. In 1985, she appeared alongside Mel Gibson in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a film for which she also recorded the soundtrack. By then, her wild, frizzy hair had already become iconic.

In 1986, the studio album Break Every Rule took her on a world tour that lasted nearly three years. But it was in 1989, with Foreign Affair, that her leather-clad silhouette was cemented as an indelible image of diva power — thanks in part to a German photographer who also immortalized the supermodels of the time (Naomi, Claudia, Cindy) as modern goddesses.

“I don’t think Peter approached Tina with the intention of constructing her image,” explains Benjamin Lindbergh, one of the late Lindbergh’s sons, who now manages his visual legacy. “What made their collaboration so powerful is that they weren’t trying to create a new Tina. He simply revealed the real Tina.”

That lack of any deliberate intention to craft Turner’s stripped-down, Black, and radically sexual image in Lindbergh’s photographs is confirmed by Tina’s husband, Erwin Bach, who wrote the book’s foreword: “What I loved about Peter was his complete lack of pretension. Despite being a great artist and a consummate professional, he was a very relaxed, down-to-earth guy, always happy to walk around in just jeans and a cap. Fame meant nothing to him. He was more interested in the person beyond the image, and we agreed on that. We were both very worldly and direct, and we liked that about each other. We also came from similar upbringings: we had both grown up in the Rhineland, West Germany, just a few miles from each other, and we also spoke the same language. That created an immediate bond between us.”

But what about Lindbergh’s connection with Tina Turner? There was also an immediate connection, as the images attest: in their very first session, he photographed her climbing one of the pillars of the Eiffel Tower like a panther. A few years later, in 1996, Lindbergh was brought in to direct the video for Missing You (featuring a cameo by a very young Mark Vanderloo). A still from that shoot also appears in the book.

“He always said the best photographs are born of trust, and with Tina he truly found a partner. Thanks to that trust, he could approach her not as a superstar to be beautified or styled, but as a human being with incredible presence and depth. So if I had to say where this work stood within his body of work, I would say it was a labor of love, one of those collaborations in which he felt he could honor the person in question and also create timeless images. It wasn’t just another commission. It was a friendship translated into images,” explains Benjamin Lindbergh.

To further enrich that creative bond, they also had the presence of Azzedine Alaïa, the designer behind some of the diva’s most unforgettable looks and a close friend of hers.

“But it’s important to emphasize that Alaïa never interfered with Peter’s work, precisely because he loved his photography and trusted him blindly. Azzedine knew that his designs would inspire him without any need for direction. That’s why he often called on my father to photograph his creations: he knew the result would live up to his own work, and not only that, but Peter’s sensitivity would enhance it.”

The singer and the photographer’s bond grew so strong that they traveled together to Deauville, where he photographed her on the beach, with her mother Zelda — who had abandoned her at age 11 — and in the Mojave Desert. Lindbergh said one of the things that impressed him most about Tina Turner was that, despite being one of the most energetic people he had ever photographed, she was also one of the quietest. That didn’t stop their relationship from continuing almost until the end of the photographer’s life. The last time they saw each other was at her home in Switzerland in 2016. Her second husband also recalls it: “We had dinner on the terrace, shared memories and laughter — it was an unforgettable night. And he said something wonderful: ‘You have done the best two people can do with this thing called love.’”

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