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{{Short description|Pierre Winther: Visual Artist and World Builder, Shaping Realms Beyond Imagination.}}

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Pierre Winther is a Danish self-taught visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker known for his cinematic and narrative-driven photographic style. His work combines the compositional drama of film with the narrative complexity of classical painting, producing meticulously staged scenes that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction crafted entirely without digital manipulation.

Pierre Winther is also a world-renowned conceptualist, raconteur, image-maker, and visionary. For over three decades, the Copenhagen-born artist has pioneered the realms of photography and film. He seamlessly moves across both mediums, expanding on one to create the other, producing high-concept visuals that innovate as much as they inspire.

With his mind deeply rooted in cinema, Winther composes each image impeccably, telling entire narratives in a single moment. He captures the point at which the story reveals itself, like the essential action of a temporal scene frozen in time. Such images transcend their static motif, nurturing curiosity and prompting the viewer to engage their imaginations and complete the story within their minds.

Winther's photographs are recognized for their hyperreal aesthetic and surreal staging, often capturing a single moment of narrative tension that encourages viewers to imagine the before and after. His imagery frequently explores themes of psychological tension, irony, control, and surrealism, set against real-world backdrops. Rooted in the language of cinema, his images resemble frames from an unfolding story evoking both completion and mystery in a single shot.

The inherent cinematic quality in Winther's images makes his characters feel very real, even when they inhabit a visual world that seems quite extraordinary. Timeless dramas unfold through depictions of organized chaos, presented in bold, saturated hues. He uses lighting and composition to propel his subjects from the surface of the image, allowing them to live among made-up and sometimes hyper-real worlds in ways that remain natural, human, and organic. This approach empowers the viewer to go deep within their imagination, to push the confines of subject matter and location into a mind-space of metaphor, all while retaining the integrity of the moment.

Shark Riding (1990) is one of Winther's most iconic and daring works, captured in December 1990 at the Great Barrier Reef. The image features a man in sunglasses calmly riding a live 14-foot tiger shark an urban figure juxtaposed against the vastness of the ocean, symbolizing the tension between civilization and nature. Far from a digital illusion, the photograph was executed with a team of over 25 people, including a professional shark wrangler and a dive instructor. The shoot was conducted entirely in real conditions, with a stuntman riding the shark for the final image. This award-winning composition is both visually elegant and conceptually powerful a surreal depiction of people living on the edge. It forms part of The Underwater Project, a series that draws parallels between the dangers of the ocean and the chaos of urban environments.

In 1993, Winther revolutionized advertising with Diesel's Successful Living campaign. As the brainchild behind the campaign, Winther created the world for Diesel's iconic images, which included provocative shots like Car Crash and House of Love. These images broke conventions and transformed Diesel into a symbol of rebellion and innovation. The campaign earned praise from photographer Helmut Newton, who called it "brilliant," cementing Winther's role as a brand architect capable of elevating companies through powerful, narrative-driven storytelling. The images behind the Successful Living campaign became so iconic and famous that they remain embedded in the cultural landscape of the time, solidifying Diesel's status as an influential, boundary-pushing brand.

Winther's project This is Not America challenges societal perceptions by featuring hooded men who initially evoke the Ku Klux Klan. Shot in moody black and white, the figures appear in unsettling scenes chatting at a bar, posed in formation, or swimming. However, in color, it's revealed that these figures are not members, but religious penitents from Sevilla, Spain, dressed in traditional Easter garb dating back to the 1300s. This twist emphasizes the danger of snap judgments and encourages viewers to question their assumptions, exploring societal norms and human behavior through a provocative lens.

Throughout his career, Winther has collaborated with leading global brands such as Dunhill, Diesel, Levi's, Nike, Smirnoff, MTV, Coca-Cola, Cartier, and LVMH, developing campaigns and visual identities that merge commercial objectives with artistic sophistication. His most radical artistic treatments have also been translated into award-winning commissions for Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A., Finlandia Vodka, Hugo Boss, Nike, and JVC. Winther enjoys both a cult and commercial following because of his experimental, yet iconic campaigns. This is just a few of the clients Pierre Winther has collaborated with artistically throughout his career.

His editorial contributions have appeared in The Face, i-D, Flaunt, Spin, Vibe, Rolling Stone, and Vogue, where he was often granted full creative control. These groundbreaking spreads have redefined the possibilities of the printed page. Winther is credited with revolutionizing fashion photography ushering in a new era of expression that goes beyond aesthetics to tell unconventional, thought-provoking stories. Remarkably, he has done all of this without the aid of digital technology, a feat almost unheard of in photography today. His rich oeuvre has been widely exhibited and is held in private collections around the world.

In the music industry, he has worked with prominent artists such as INXS, Björk, Skunk Anansie, the Beastie Boys, Massive Attack, and Nicolette, creating album artwork, videos, and other visual content that reflects his cinematic style. He has been represented by agencies including Creative Artists Agency (CAA), CLM, and Yannick Morisot, and collaborated with notable photographers like Peter Lindbergh, Helmut Newton, Anton Corbijn, and Nick Knight.

His photographic work has been exhibited at major institutions, including Fotografiska (Stockholm), Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), and NRW-Forum (Düsseldorf), and he has participated in landmark exhibitions such as Winther's Wonderworld, Archeology of Elegance, and Fashion Statements, to name a few.

In 1993, Winther joined Propaganda Films in Los Angeles, working with directors such as David Fincher, Spike Jonze, and David Lynch. He was later part of a special project group that included Ron Howard, Terry Gilliam, and Robert Rodriguez, where he contributed to the development of creative concepts across advertising, cinema, television, digital media, and experiential campaigns.

Pierre Winther was born in Copenhagen on September 25, 1963.