Harri Peccinotti: H.P. Published by Damiani.
Text by Derek Birdsall. A huge Afro frames the deadpan features of a bikini-clad sunbathing woman, her luxuriant skin dotted in pinpoints of perspiration... a close-up of a female hand with perfectly varnished nails leads to a cigarette held between fleshy red lips.... a model mouths her way around a suggestively pink lollipop... Yes, this is the calendar world of the late 1960s, as rendered by Harri Peccinotti. A fashion photographer, graphic designer and all-around artist whose work strongly influenced the fashion and collective imagination of the day, Peccinotti coined the Pirelli-calendar idiom of gleaming bodies and strong, sleek sexuality. Both objects of the male gaze and liberated leaders of the sexual revolution, women are certainly the protagonists of H.P.--sexy, sporty, independent, portrayed on dream beaches or against the background of original fashion sets. From his celebrated sunflower for the 1968 Pirelli calendar to his famous nude immersed in a bathtub of green water, H.P. presents a broad selection of shots published in fashion magazines, together with page proofs, book jackets and album covers created by Peccinotti over a period of about 40 years.
Harri Peccinotti, born in 1938, served as Art Director of Flair, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Vogue and Nova--one of the most influential magazines of the 1960s, which introduced epoch-making changes in graphics, formats and photo editing. One of the first photographers to bring black women into fashion photography, Peccinotti's fame is synonymous with two Pirelli calendars (1968 and 1969) and, as a designer, with the restyling of the French daily Le Matin in the 1970s. |
