Christa Peters was one of the best-known German photographers of the '60s.
She was born in Lübeck in 1931, studied at the "International Master School for Photography" in Stuttgart from May 1951, and apprenticed at the Lette Association in Berlin.
1954 she won the first youth photography competition at
Photokina, the world's most important photography trade fair.
1959 she was one of the co-founders of the legendary magazine "
Twen" - as the only woman on the editorial team, and her work appeared in many magazines around the world in the 60s including
Vogue,
British Vogue,
Life,
Stern,
Spiegel and
Nova well into the 1970s.
In the early 1960s, the photographer commuted between studios in
Cologne and
New York. In 1966, she opened her own studio in
London together with her future husband, the photographer
Chadwick Hall.
The textile giant Nino was one of their most lucrative clients in the 1960s. The successful company only hired the best of the best for advertising shoots: In addition to
Christa Peters, Helmut Newton, F.C. Gundlach, Guy Bourdin, Frank Horvat, Hans-Günther Kaufmann, Charlotte March, Christa Peters, Rico Puhlmann and
Regina Relang worked for the company. "We invested millions in our campaigns every year," recalls the company's former advertising manager, Peter Klein. "And we clearly benefited from the good reputation of our photographers." But while we would hear a lot about Newton and Gundlach in the years that followed, hardly anyone would know the name of the once so-popular
Christa Peters.
Unfortunately, her photographic traces in London in the late 1970s are lost.
Christa Peters died an early death caused by a serious illness.
She died in London in 1981 at the age of not even 50. After her death, contemporaries reported her husband
Chadwick Hall, himself a fashion photographer, burned her entire personal archive - whether out of grief or jealousy of her work has not been clarified to this day.
Tragic events that caused
Christa Peters' photographic work to be unjustly forgotten.
In December 1994, the executors of the now-bankrupt textile giant Nino made a surprising discovery in the company's advertising archive: They found around 80,000 fashion photos by famous photographers, including several by Christa Peters. Images that had long been thought lost.
That work is now in the Nino Building and Archive at the
Stadt Museum, Nordhorn, Germany
“NINO Hochbau” – Stadtmuseum Nordhorn
From a combination of sites:
Sie knipste auf Augenhöhe mit Helmut Newton und F.C. Gundlach - dann verschwand sie von der Bildfläche. Christa Peters zählt zu den besten deutschen Fotografen der sechziger Jahre. Trotzdem geriet sie in Vergessenheit. Dann entdeckte der Nachlassverwalter einer Textilfabrik ihren Fotoschatz.
www.spiegel.de
de.wikipedia.org
Experimental interface to a collection of biographical data describing photographers, studios, manufacturers, and others involved in the production of photographic images.
pic.nypl.org
