Peter Knapp is guest of honour at the eighth ‘Nuits Photographiques’ event in Pierrevert in the south of France. An exhibition entitled ‘Man is Everywhere’ will feature his work about various themes including, of course, fashion, he was artistic director of ELLE magazine from 1959 to 1966 and again from 1974 to 1978. He built his international reputation there through a totally new, unrestricted approach to photography in which his models moved, bringing their clothes to life in settings clearly reminding us that Peter began his career as a painter. He redesigned the weekly magazine’s logo and commissioned some of the biggest names in photography, such as Oliviero Toscani, Sarah Moon and Jean-Loup Sieff. He also worked with the big fashion designers, including Courrèges, who became a close friend. When he left the magazine, Peter Knapp went back to painting, also producing a number of reportages from around the world. He made 42 films for French television, plus another 50 in the 1990s-2000s, including a magnificent documentary on Van Gogh.
Knapp was also artistic director at Editions Sauret from 1967 to 1992 and won the prize for best art book twice, for ‘Lumières de Chartres’ and ‘Giacometti’. Meanwhile, the Centre Pompidou entrusted him with the reins of the contemporary art collection in the 1980s.
He defines himself as an ‘image-maker’ because instead of just taking photographs, he composes them and transforms them. He has been lauded in numerous articles and programmes but says that “for me, fashion is the past”. Indeed, he owes his renown to fashion, but he is also a painter, graphic designer, typographer, visual artist and film-maker. He is an iconoclastic artist but what really fascinates him is the effects of passing time, the inevitable ageing of beings and things. His work explores the wear of time, the erosion of shapes, the decline of beauty and the flight of life’s good times.
FESTIVAL
8èmes Nuits Photographiques de Pierrevert
Exhibition : L’homme est partout
Peter Knapp
From June 18th to September 30th, 2016
Fondation Carzou
7 – 9 Boulevard Elemir Bourges
04100 Manosque
France
http://www.pierrevert-nuitsphotographiques.com
