Born in 1941, Düsseldorf. Lives in Düsseldorf.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hans Peter Feldmann started to work with books, photographs and readily found materials. The conceptual art practice of rethinking the connection between art, politics and everyday life, of adopting amateurish gestures and denying authenticity as well as objecthood, found particular expression in his use of documentary strategies. In 1968 he produced his first books named Bilderhefte (Picture books), which contain series of pictures collected and ordered in an objective way, in contrast with the common use of photographic images.
Feldmann's books offer tools to reveal photography as a product that gets perceived as reality, thus ratifying the existing ideological structure. For the last forty years he has been collecting various uses and themes in photography. His book, Portrait. 50 Years of a Woman (1994), provides an insight into this multi-temporal archive. The book consists of three hundred photographs of a woman from childhood to the age of fifty, in chronological order. This pictorial journey through a stranger's past activates the collective memory of the European post-war generation. Any person of a similar age and background might replace her in those trivial settings. The collection's inherent conformity highlights typical characteristics of representing, showcasing and approving the norms of private life through the means of photography.
Bread (2008) consists of a slice of bread, the middle of which has been eaten, so that the remaining crust frames an absence and emptiness. The crust is shown on the white museum pedestal as a sculpture. Evoking metaphors of bread as a symbol of life and labour, but also of precariousness and poverty, this small, modest work possesses true monumentality.