The name Harri Peccinotti is synonymous with sensuality and eroticism, just think of the Pirelli Calender, the Rolling Stone of the 1950s, the British edition of Vanity Fair or Nova magazine. Peccinotti's imagery has made him one of the giants of 20th century art and fashion photography on which he has been a significant influence. The designer actually began his career in a rather unphotographic environment: making cover designs for a jazz label, advertising, graphics and typography.

In the sixties, he then launched Nova magazine. Initially planned as an experiment, the magazine dealt with current issues such as racism and emancipation but also with aesthetics – in unusually staged fashion photos. Closing in on the model, the camera frames tight close ups of faces and bodies. Combined with sequences depicting movement and multiple exposures, a new form of visual language with an impressive narrative immediacy emerges. Staged in everyday environments with friends and professional models, the stories evoke subtle emotions and sensuality. Even today, decades after their creation, the images appear amazingly timeless and modern and are still able to seduce the viewer.

In 1968 and 1969, he photographed the Pirelli calendar and these two editions of the most famous calendar in the world (which, except for the female models, have virtually nothing in common with its recent editions) were a milestone in Peccinotti's career.  Similarly, in his fashion spreads for Nova, the photographs were staged excerpts: Bodies and forms reduced by Peccinotti to a sensual line depicting the curve of a neck and yet able, as part of a larger picture, to frame a story about individual beauty. Facial expressions and body language are the key to the images' ability to convey sensuality. There are always details, whether a slightly opened mouth, shoulders or hips, an aesthetic economy of colour and line forces the viewer to invent a story to accompany the image.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, this imagery is a visual mosaic whose parts Harri Peccinotti designs to captivate and charm his readers, to bring them closer to his personal vision of beauty. These components have an amazing effect in the context of their presentation because like a puzzle they seduce the viewer to their own reaction. To sort these details is to construct a new whole. The stories told by the pictures unravel and add new levels of interpretation to what has already been seen, supplementing the given history of a particular individual.

»Depth of Field«, the title of Harri Peccinotti's presentation, is wisely chosen. In a figurative sense, the strength of the images is not exclusively derived from the virtuosic simplicity of their design but rather in the subsequent focusing that takes place exclusively in the imagination of the viewer and – as in the »black series« of fashion photos of images mirrored in a black studio floor – are a reflection and echo of his own dreams and aspirations.

Mehr über Harri Peccinotti: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Peccinotti