Petter Hegre
Short version
Norwegian photographer, famous for act photography.
Long version
Petter Hegre was born on 8 September, 1969 in Stavanger, Norway. He decided to study photography at the Brooks Institute of Photography in California. He worked as an apprentice with Richard Avedon (http://www.richardavedon.com), who is considered to be among the worlds' 20 best photographers. After finishing his apprenticeship, Hegre moved back to Norway, and started his own photo studio, from where his career slowly started to accelerate.
Making a name for himself as a good portrait photographer, he started to experiment in Act photography, and slowly became famous in Norway. In 2000 he published a book; "My Wife", which was his breakthrough internationally, and which caused him to win several awards; Among others the "Flying dick" awards at the Erotic Oscars.
In January 2002, Hegre started Hegre Archives (www.hegre-archives.com), which basically is a porn site. Not necessarily because of the visual contents of the site, but with articles such as "How to succeed: Does getting laid take too much time?", "Be a woman's therapist and you'll get sex" and "Nerds don't score" along with typical porn models used in the archive (girls with either very large or very small breasts, often shaved etc).
On the other hand – Some of the pictures are truly amazing as far as act photography goes. The sheer quality of the pictures and the intricate lighting that often appears thoughout the photo shoots are exceptional. Granted, the pictures often show too much, and there really is no good reason for posting 130 pictures from the same photo shoot on the web, but quality-wise, there is not a lot worth complaining about.
The seriousness of the web site is not particularly high, though: In an effort to create PR, Hegre is reaching out to people to make publicity for his website, hidden in the form of bogus reviews: "If you're not the writing-type, we would be happy to provide you with an article/review of Hegre-Archives.com tailor-made to any website or print publication, and if you arrange to have this article/review posted or published, then you qualify for the following free gifts!". In other words, Hegre is happy to provide a ready-written review of his own site, if you are willing to try to get it published. The rewards are based on how many people are likely to read the story. The catch? "The review or promotional article must be unequivocally positive toward Hegre Archives.com". (meaning that this review on E2 is hardly going to get me a free membership. Which is all right, considering I already paid for my membership)
Despite being somewhat tabloid in form, the web site seems to be a success story among photographers and the general public alike: "We have between 500K - 800K unique users per day, but the number of members is secret", Hegre said in an interview with yours truly.
What SharQ thinks…
I think Hegre is a fabulous photographer. His talent is partially that he has the gift of vision: He can see the beauty in people, and he sees the available light that is needed to pull out the true beauty of people. When that is mentioned, the models he uses are very.. uhmm.. porn-like. Which can be a good thing, if that's what you looking for.. But if you are searching for art, this is not necessarily a good thing.
My challenge to Hegre would be to choose models who are less conventionally pretty – less silicone-like and more "real".
Go visit his page on www.hegre-archives.com, and have a look at the tour, to get an impression of his work.