Peter Badge was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1974 and began his career in photography as a free-lance artist/ photographer in 1993. In 1995, he moved to Berlin to study art history and has been living and working there ever since. He initially worked as a free-lance photographer for various magazines, and soon started to develop his own concepts and projects.

Choosing portraiture as his primary focus, Badge concentrates on noted personalities, including artists and actors, musicians and photographers and, in his latest works, on “Men on moon - from Armstrong to Aldrin”, “Icons of the Economy” and “Philanthropists”.

 

He has also completed series on the electronic music pioneer Oskar Sala, Elvis impersonators and Family members around the globe (“Elviswho”) and the popular German actor and musician Marius Müller-Westernhagen (in cooperation with the Art Cologne and the National Music Center in Washington, D.C.).

 

In 2000 Badge embarked on a series of photographs of Nobel Laureates. Commissioned by a group of renowned organizations including the Deutsches Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of American History and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., as well as his partners, the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and the Foundation Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and co-funded by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung.

 

This project has developed into a long-term, ongoing mission, which has taken him all over the world in order to capture images of every living Nobel Laureate.

In 2012, Badge was commissioned by the Klaus Tschira Foundation in Heidelberg (in cooperation with the awarding institutions) to create portraits of all living recipients of the Turing Award, the Abel Prize, the Fields Medal and the Nevanlinna Prize around the world.

 

Since 25 years, Peter Badge has been travelling non-stop around the globe for his projects and has published more than 30 books, most recently Ingenious Encounters (2023, STEIDL, Göttingen). His work is represented in museums and various international private and public collections. In 2014 Badge founded the interdisciplinary science platform — Science. Now with more than 150 Nobel, Turing, Abel, Fields Medal Laureates and others, Peter Badge is the Honorary Consul General of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste in Germany.