Graphic designer, artistic director of ELLE magazine in the 60s and 70s, photographer, Peter Knapp (born in Switzerland in 1931) revolutionized fashion photography with his taste for movement and daring framing.

Peter Knapp’s work covers not only the adventure of silver photography, but also the artistic and creative history of the second half of the 20th century.

In the 1950s-1960s, at a time when photography was establishing itself as the object of novelty, Peter Knapp was omnipresent.

In these times of decorative modernity, when department stores set the pace, he imposed his line on Galeries Lafayette. In what was to become the golden age of women’s magazines, he renovated the artistic direction of ELLE magazine. Peter Knapp was a trendsetter, sometimes even a trendsetter. From applied creation to commissioned work, he is where the lines evolve.

Trained in Zurich, Switzerland, by Bauhaus professors, his work incorporates the visual rules of this school: purity, harmony of form, modernity and interdisciplinarity. Over the next 50 years, he experimented until he had exhausted all that silver-based photography could offer: sequences, abstractions, monochromes and more.

He constantly plays with the constraints of commissions. Everything bends to the search for a singular material that unifies form and color. The world has a geometric structure that Peter Knapp interprets, decomposes and recomposes at will. His work is entirely preoccupied with graphics.

In fashion, he rejects ordinary shots. The framing and viewpoints are different, with dynamic effects based on the diagonal.

Between 1957 and 1967, he made several trips to the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500. For him, these legendary events become the backdrop for fashion photographs. But they also echoed his attraction to line, color and speed. Under his lens, models and machines reveal their wild allure.

Peter Knapp