Fashion Photograph for Courrèges, Thoiry, 1970
Archival pigment print, 2022
signed

Both as a photographer and as art director of the magazine Elle, Peter Knapp found a visual language for the new attitude to life that emerged in the 1960s. In Knapp’s pictures, the models are free and (almost) always in motion, no longer trapped in static poses. Knapp lets them walk, jump or fly through the universe.

 

In this picture, taken in 1970 for the fashion label Courrèges and offered by Fotostiftung Schweiz as an exclusive edition, the model is bouncing down a country road on a bright orange ball. According to Knapp, the approach of a red car at the very same moment, blending wonderfully into the shot, was not foreseen, but an “accepted coincidence”.