Peter and Björn Bischoff

show their exclusive photos with prominent stars from reports around the world in 60 years in a first exhibition in the artists' village of Worpswede

Photo exhibition in the SCHLUH Gallery from 01.09.2024 to 05.01.2025 - Vernissage on 1 September 2024 (4 p.m.)

In an exciting retrospective, the SCHLUH gallery is showing unique images and stories from the life's work of star photographer Peter Bischoff and his successor Björn Bischoff. Please note: The usage rights for most of the photos shown are held by Getty Images - licensing only available there.

More detailed descriptions of the 56 panels and 382 photos of the exhibition can be found HERE

"First of all, a big thank you to my son Björn, my wife Jutta, gallery owner Markus Lippeck, who had the idea for the exhibition, and Matthias Koch from the Tintenfisch company in Lilienthal, who printed the almost 400 photos and without whose active help I would never have been able to realize the exhibition, because it was much more work than everyone had thought."

Peter Bischoff

"In a time when images seem to be dissolving due to digital alienation and AI, a topic that has been pursued in such continuity for over 60 years and was mostly recorded on analogue film is also a unique contemporary document. The images have largely not been digitally edited!
The non-profit art association Schluh.art eV is pleased to be able to show a piece of media and journalism history from the German post-war period with this exhibition. The exhibition is solely in the context of public interest in current events in this area. We are pleased to be able to promote and document this with this event."

Markus Lippeck / Curator and gallery owner Schluh.art.eV

Photo on the right:

Peter Bischoff with Udo Jürgens on a reporting trip to Jamaica

Here is some information about Peter Bischoff - born in 1941 and trained as a political editor at the WESER-KURIER after a two-year traineeship and then the first head of the North Germany office of the Hamburger Morgenpost. He is a freelance photographer and journalist who has lived in Worpswede since 1983 and who has accompanied almost all the stars of German show business and many international stars in Hollywood with his photo reports around the world in 133 countries and their capitals on all 5 continents from 1970 onwards. In addition, there were visits to many royal families (Denmark, Norway), invitations to Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi and the Shah of Persion in Tehran and trips with Rolf Seelmann-Eggebert and Istvan Bury to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In doing so, he wrote a piece of journalistic history that is documented in this exhibition.
He flew around the globe almost 100 times, covering almost four million kilometers, and completed 150 cruises with prominent stars on 30 ships around the world to capture over three million photos of celebrities. At first, the films were sent by air freight to Worpswede, developed in the Seekamp studio and then distributed to the press by express. This resulted in millions of copies of his photos, with many cover stories, in a wide variety of print and TV media!
He began as a writing reporter at various major sporting events such as WERDER Bremen's first German championship title in 1965 with the Weser-Kurier headline "A cry of joy from 40,000 throats", the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, the 1972 World Cup in Mexico, the 1974 World Cup final win in Munich or a visit to boxing idol Max Schmeling at Coca Cola in the USA in 1979.

Photo on the left:

Peter Bischoff with world map and the 133 countries visited

When he became completely self-employed as a freelance correspondent, no one could have predicted that he would one day swap his typewriter for a camera. "After a short time, I was fed up with having to sit at meetings for four hours for a few marks per line, while photographers took their photos in 10 minutes and earned twice as much."
This is what Peter Bischoff said. With the first camera given to him by his mother, Peter Bischoff - now a married father - tried to become a "double earner".

He was soon photographing countless reports from all over the world during TV shoots, vacation trips and home stories with celebrities. For example, he accompanied well-known TV series such as 50 episodes of the ZDF "Traumschiff" from 1981 to 2001 (Peter Bischoff's "Traumschiff" book is available at kiosks -- plus a book about Heino's travels around the world with Peter Bischoff), 29 episodes of the Pro7 series "Glückliche Reise" in 29 countries with 290,000 kilometers of air travel, "Insel der Träume" in Hawaii, "Schöne Ferien" in 6 countries and "Hotel Paradies" in Mallorca. He took the first photos of the ARD long-running series "Lindenstrasse" and was a regular guest on the "Schwarzwaldklinik" etc. This led to friendly contacts with many stars (see the information box at the end for a list of names).
His special way of working consisted of maintaining personal and trusting relationships with celebrities - motto: "Not everything you know and photograph needs to be published. When you constantly see the top stars of show business on their private travels, you get to know things that they don't necessarily want to read in the newspaper the next day. But only those who don't photograph everything and write down everything they know will get everything in the future.

Photo on the right:

Peter Bischoff at the ZDF gala "The German Television Award", "Coloneum" in Cologne

Peter Bischoff owed this attitude to a lifelong friendship with the Dutch showmaster Rudi Carrell (died on July 2, 2006), whom he photographed together with his then new girlfriend Anke Bobbert (whom he later married) on January 10, 1967 during their first flirtation at the Bremen 6-Day Race. He did not give the photos to the press in order to spare the married Rudi a similar sacking from Radio Bremen, where his first ARD show was just being broadcast, as his married compatriot Lou van Burg had just suffered from ZDF because of various lovers. Rudi's thank you four weeks later was a call to Peter Bischoff with a first - exclusive - invitation to the Radio Bremen TV studio, where the fired Lou van Burg was Rudi's surprise guest. The media was in a frenzy. At the end of the show, the doorman had a list of 25 calls from magazines, all of which wanted these photos. The result after 4 weeks for the then low earner (400 DM per month): 5,000 DM in his account! He was certain: There is no business like show business.

Photo on the left:

Rudi Carrell with his girlfriend Anke (later wife) at
Get to know each other at the Bremen 6-Day Race

This was Peter Bischoff's entry into show business as a FREELANCE reporter, something he has never regretted to this day.

Confidentiality as a basis for further close contacts: Many friendships arose from mutual sympathy. For example, with Roy Black, with whom Peter Bischoff made his first major report in 1969 during a Mediterranean cruise in Tunisia, or Udo Jürgens, whom he accompanied for the first time on a trip to Japan in 1968 and "who after that was reluctant to travel unless I was there."
Not to forget folk music emperor Heino, whom Peter Bischoff met in 1970 and with whom he has a great friendship, not only because of their shared passion for skat, which reached a climax in 2018 with the photo book "Heino - Traveling around the whole world - The most beautiful photos by Peter Bischoff from 50 years".
A world traveler on the prowl and arm in arm with stars - actually a dream job. Or not? "Definitely," laughed Peter Bischoff, who speaks fluent English and Spanish, "my love of travel and my curiosity about people was even more than well paid until the beginning of the new millennium." But every beginning was difficult, because the gap in the market that he found in the early 1970s required a lot of daring and willingness to invest. Paying thousands in travel costs in order to be able to sell a story was too risky for most freelance colleagues. But for decades, Peter Bischoff, who has lived in Worpswede near Bremen since 1983, was very good at business - at least since he was able to supply the tabloids with colorful show impressions of the stars since 1981 thanks to producer Wolfgang Rademann as a constant companion to the ZDF "Traumschiff" series.
So it was no wonder that the former "Dream Ship" production manager Horst Schäfer hired the successful photographer globetrotter exclusively for his first own project for the "flying dream ship" and christened it "Happy Journey". For the most travel-loving German TV production of all time, a man like Peter Bischoff was just what he needed. "Happy Journey" was the name of the mammoth project by Scorpio Production for the TV channel Pro 7, in which 290,000 kilometers of air travel were completed in 30 months, with stops in 29 countries. Together with Thomas Fritsch and Conny Glogger as tour guides, Juraj Kukura and Volker Brandt as pilots and over 150 prominent guest stars such as Harald Juhnke and Günter Pfitzmann, Peter Bischoff once again flew to all five continents and still talks enthusiastically about what was probably the most exotic filming of a German TV production.

Photo on the right:

Roy Black (left) with Peter Bischoff during interview during Mediterranean cruise in Tunis, Tunisia

Sometimes bad luck was right on the heels of the "Happy Journey" team: In Cape Town, "tour guide" Conny Glogger broke her leg
while riding, and "co-pilot" Volker Brandt, who was sitting on a horse for the first time in 25 years, slipped 20 meters down a steep slope in Arizona. In Greenland, "chief pilot" Juraj Kukura and Monika Peitsch were able to use a helicopter to escape from the ice that was breaking apart as the snow melted. And in Sun City (South Africa), Volker Brandt accidentally gave his colleague Juraj Kukura a black eye during an action scene. But that wasn't all: in Thailand, "tour guide" Amadeus August (who died on July 6, 1992) was arrested for "temple sacrilege" and on the way to the Fiji Islands, producer Horst Schäfer suffered the same fate for alleged currency smuggling. But it was precisely such adventures that brought the team together. After filming for over three years, the team felt like one big family. The highlight: the first "Happy Journey" baby. In Greenland, where it had not been dark for 24 hours, "not only was there a lot of work, but there was also passionate love," as Peter Bischoff said with a smile. The pretty TV hostess Alexa Wiegandt (then 30) spent such stimulating hours with the assistant director Alexander Wiedl in the "eternal ice" that her baby was born in March 1994. Volker Brandt must have had a particularly erotic pleasure in Ibiza when he was allowed to play a whirlpool scene with the naked Tina Plate. When she got into the foamy water, however, no one was allowed to watch and Brandt had to keep his hands above water during filming. Many unforgettable stories came about on the sidelines of filming TV series or on private vacations with the stars - for example, a first exclusive story with Daliah Lavi and her mother in 1972 in Shavei Zion (Israel). P.Bischoff was the only one allowed to accompany SWR reporter A.Krogmann and his team and was quite nervous when Daliah told him that this would be the first time her mother, who had fled the Nazis, had met Germans. When the mother gave us a warm hug after a few days of filming, a lot of weight was lifted from everyone's shoulders.

Photo on the left:

Shooting day for the Pro 7 television series "Happy Journey" at the Plaza Hotel in Bali

But luck is also part of the job:

Peter Bischoff, together with Günter Pfitzmann and his wife Lilo, had booked a special Concorde flight from New York to a Caribbean cruise on the MS "Deutschland" for November 24, 2000, with the Deilmann shipping company. When Pfitzmann, who was supposed to give two readings on board, canceled the trip 14 days in advance because of a heart attack, he was initially very disappointed -- but on November 25, this suddenly turned into enormous relief when he and the Pfitzmann family learned from the newspaper that the Concorde had crashed shortly after takeoff in Paris and that none of the 100 German cruisers and none of the CREW had survived the terrible accident -- since then he has celebrated his 2nd birthday every year on July 25 (see BILD newspaper article in the exhibition).

A year earlier, in November 1999, Peter Bischoff and the Pfitzmann family were caught in a hurricane on an Atlantic cruise on the new EUROPA from Hapag Lloyd from Gran Canaria to Barbados, and many on board feared that the luxury liner could sink due to the threatening list. Only by radically turning off course - contrary to the shipping company's orders - was Captain Wolters able to prevent this, and three days later the Pfitzmann family was relieved to be reunited with their sons Robert and Andreas in New York (see the original Bams article in the exhibition).

But the good experiences outweighed the bad: in February 2008, he was there exclusively when singer Tony Marshall was made an honorary citizen of the South Sea island for his hit "Bora, Bora". In South Africa, on the way to the Cape of Good Hope, still photographer Peter Bischoff had to step in for an ill actor during the filming of "Happy Journey" and portray a vacationer who was suffering a heart attack. Not an easy task at all... but he survived it (see report from a South African daily newspaper in the exhibition).

Photo on the right:

Günter Pfitzmann and his wife Lilo with reporter Peter Bischoff after
Hurricane survived with MS Europa after arrival in New York

Son Björn (born 1966) also landed many photographic hits - including his worldwide printed exclusive photo of Heino with Siegfried & Roy during a visit by "Rolling Stones" singer Mick Jagger in Cologne when Heino's wife Hannelore smuggled Björn into the backstage area that was closed off to the press...!

Peter Bischoff could tell such anecdotes for hours. In his private life, he has been a big SV Werder Bremen football fan for 70 years and at the age of 72 he played his last football game with the seniors of FC Worpswede together with his son Björn and grandson Vincent -17-, who now plays for VFL Osnabrück in the U19 DFB junior league, where his long-time friend Pico Schütz - honorary captain of Werder Bremen - kicked off. You can feel the enthusiasm with which he still goes about it after almost 60 years in "show business". But of course he didn't want to retire completely after such exciting years and when his girlfriend Daliah Lavi (died on May 3, 2017) called Peter Bischoff in 2016, a year before her death, to say that he absolutely had to photograph her as a new grandmother with her first granddaughter in Los Angeles, the flight was quickly booked...

Photo on the left:

Björn Bischoff photo that went around the world: Heino with Siegfried & Roy as guests of honour of “Rolling Stones” boss Mick Jagger at his concert in Cologne.

The press agency, which is now run by Björn Bischoff and has been successfully continued by him since 2014, has a photo inventory of 800,000 motifs from over 60 (freelance) photographers. Father Peter has been writing the interviews and reportage texts on the daily event topics since 2014. After 1 year of photography school and 5 years of studies, which he completed with a degree in economics, Björn himself found a liking for being a reporter and, like his father, jetted around the world until his wedding in 1998. The press agency had its office in the premises of today's SCHLUH gallery from 1983 to the beginning of 2023. The extension to the building was built in the 1990s especially for the needs of the agency, which at the time had 16 employees, in order to find space for the millions of negatives and slides. Around 400,000 of these motifs can still be licensed for publication in digital form via the international photo agency Getty Images.

So in this exhibition, in which only the personal photos of Peter and Björn are shown, everything comes together once again! The house at Schluh 71 has experienced many stories and celebrities have not only been guests here as business partners, but often also as friends... such as Udo Jürgens with his whole family to marry his daughter Jenny here at the Barkenhoff and to travel with her from here to the church wedding and to their honeymoon in Norway on the MS "Europa" (see photos in the exhibition). Also photographed during the Worpswede visit: Wolfgang Stumph ("Stubbe"), Gunther Emmerlich, Günter Pfitzmann, Ross Antony with husband Paul Reeves (at their wedding + privately), "Tatort" inspector Axel Prahl as a singer in the Music Hall and private stroll, Karl Dall at one of his last appearances as a singer in the Music Hall, Albert Hammond in the OHZ town hall, etc., etc.

This exhibition documents the life's work of Peter and Björn Bischoff, which could not have been realized without the family business of the agency with Peter's wife Jutta and its dedicated employees over the years.

Photo on the right:

Udo Jürgens and wife Panja (3rd and 4th from right), daughter Jenny and son-in-law Michael Lindner (3rd and 4th from left), son John and his then partner Jeanne (couple right), the groom's parents Oscar Lindner and wife Edit (couple left) and registrar Christel Leopold after Jenny and Michael's wedding at Peter Bischoff's home

Opening hours and contact:

from 1.9.: FR – SUN 11am to 6pm or by appointment
Gallery SCHLUH Im Schluh 71 27726 Worpswede https://www.schluh.art
04792 9899544 or 0162 6412 632

The following photos of these stars - living and deceased - can be seen in the exhibition:

1. Artists active to date:

Adorf, Mario - Almsick, Franziska "Franzi" van - Bäumler, Hans-Jürgen - Bassey, Shirley - Baumgart, Klaus - Becker, Boris - Berben, Iris - Berger, Senta - Biedermann, Julia - Blanco, Roberto - Borg, Andy - Borsody, Suzanne and Cosima von - Brink, Bernhard - Charell, Marlene - Collins, Joan - Denmark, Queen Margrethe II. of - Diba, former Empress Farah - Drews, Jürgen - Ebstein, Katja - Elstner, Frank - Frantz, Prof. Justus - Froboess, Cornelia - Glas, Uschi - Gottschalk, Thomas - Hallervorden, Dieter Hammond-Albert -Heesters-Rethel, Simone - Hehn, Sascha - Heino - Herrmann, Herbert - Hertel, Stefanie - Hoenig, Heinz - Iglesias, Julio - Jagger, Mick - Janson, Horst - Judith & Mel - Jürgens, Jenny - Kaiser, Roland - Kilius, Marika - Koch, Dr. Marianne - Körner, Diana and Lara-Joy - Koller, Dagmar - Kollo, Dorthe + Nathalie - Kraus, Peter - Kronzucker, Dieter - Krüger jun., Hardy - Kruse, Anja - Lippert, Wolfgang - Maffay, Peter - Marjan, Marie-Luise - May, Michaela - Mross, Stefan - Mueller-Stahl, Armin - Myhre, Wencke - Nerke, Uschi - Norway, King Harald V of - Nosbusch, Desiree - Ohoven, Ute - Paul, Bernhard - Postel, Sabine - Quinn, Freddy - Rajter, Dunja - Reiber, Carolin - Richter, Ilja - Rieschel, Claudia - Sasson, Deborah - Schanze, Michael - Schautzer, Max - Schmidt, Harald - Schramm, Günther - Silbereisen, Florian - Solbach, Sigmar - Sommer, Elke - Speidel, Jutta - Stumph, Wolfgang + daughter Stephanie - Tiedemann, Carlo von - Tilton, Charlene - Uhlen, Susanne - Valaitis, Lena - Valente, Caterina - Wagner, Robert - Weck, Peter etc.

Photo on the left:

Roberto Blanco on a sightseeing flight over New York

2. Deceased artists:

Alexander, Peter - Bach, Vivi - Beckenbauer, Franz - Black, Roy - Brice, Pierre - Brynner, Yul - Carrell, Rudi - Clüver, Bernd - Cordalis, Costa - Dor, Karin - Emmerlich, Gunther - Erhardt, Heinz -Eskens, Margot - Fritsch, Thomas - Fuchsberger, Joachim - Gabriel, Gunter - Hagman, Larry - Hamann, Evelyn - Harmstorf, Raimund - Heck, Dieter Thomas - Heesters, Johannes - Hofmann, Peter - Jürgens, Curd - Jürgens, Udo - Juhnke, Harald - Keller, Heide - Kramm, Hannelore - Krebs, Diether - Krüger sen., Hardy - Krug, Manfred - Kubitschek, Ruth-Maria - Kulenkampff, Hans-Joachim - Lamprecht, Günter - Last, James - Lavi, Daliah - Lechtenbrink, Volker - Marshall, Tony - Menge, Wolfgang - Millowitsch, Willy - Milva - Moik, Karl - Moore, Roger - Müller, Gerd - Ode, Erik - Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza - Shah of Persia - Pfitzmann, Günter - Pleitgen, Ulrich - Prey, Hermann - Rademann, Wolfgang - Rauch, Siegfried - Rebroff, Ivan -Roberts, Chris Rothenberger, Anneliese - Rühmann, Heinz - Savallas, Telly - Schell, Maria - Schenk, Heinz - Schmidt, Peer - Schönherr, Dietmar - Schürmann, Petra - Sebaldt, Maria - Siegfried & Roy - Steeger, Ingrid - Strack, Günter - Tappert, Horst - Thoelke, Wim - Thomalla, Georg - Valentin, Barbara - Volkmann, Elisabeth - Weiss, Heinz - Wepper, Fritz and Elmar - Werner, Margot - Weyer, Consul (Hans-Hermann) - Wildbolz, Klaus - Wussow, Klausjürgen etc.

Photo on the right:

Johannes Heesters and his wife Simone Rethel visited the world-famous restaurant "Maxim's" in Paris, which he sang about in one of his most famous songs in the opera "The Merry Widow" as "Count Danilo"

The usage rights for most of the photos shown are held exclusively by Getty Images - licensing only available there.

The photos cannot be purchased here and licenses are not available here!
They will only be shown as part of the exhibition from September 1, 2024 to January 5, 2025.
The executive body of the exhibition is the non-profit art association Schluh.art eV

Any form of unauthorized distribution or use is prohibited.

ATTENTION: For licensing reasons, we ask you to observe the photography ban in the entire premises of the Schluh Gallery!!!