“What drives me is the act of translating ideas into images. I want to visualise my thoughts, to express my fantasies and stories pictorially. Je ne prends pas de photos, je les fais.”

With this credo, Peter Knapp, born in 1931 in Bäretswil, Zürcher Oberland, became an influential figure in the international fashion world during the 1960s and ’70s. After studying at the Zurich School of Applied Arts, he had great success, especially as art director at Paris-based magazine Elle. In a time of social upheaval, which was reflected to no small extent in fashion, he found the right images for the liberation of the body and mind. Elle, a leading medium of emancipation under editor-in-chief Hélène Lazareff, contributed significantly to a buoyant democratisation of women’s clothing: prêt-à-porter instead of haute-couture, minijupe instead of corset, functionality instead of stiff elegance, self-confident women on the streets instead of models in the studio. Peter Knapp’s layouts and photographs conveyed this new attitude to the body and to life, which many women in the 1960s identified with.

Fotostiftung Schweiz presents a selection from around 700 donated photographs by Peter Knapp. While paying tribute to this outstanding Swiss designer’s oeuvre, the exhibition brings to life the mood of an epoch and the societal transformation that took place within it.

Exhibition leaflet