DEC U)ES AGO LONDON-BORN LKNSMAN IIARRI PECCINOTTI CHANGED THE WAY WE LOOK AT THE FEMALE FORM. HIS CLASSIC IM AGES ARE JUST AS HOLD AND PROYOC \TIYE TOD VY r ' ¦ ^ o fully comprehend the power of the work of photo-I 1 grapher and art director Harri Peccinotti, please I turn your attention to the photograph at the left of I this paragraph and appreciate, for a moment, why _l_ it works: The tongue, in macro, laps at smudged lipstick, fine facial hair and milk in a surprising and graphic composition that is equally sexy and hyperreal. Bold and cleverly cropped appreciations of women's bodies such as this are a hallmark of Peccinotti's work, which continues to influence artists and others today. Best known for producing two of the sexiest years in the already impossibly sexy Pirelli calendar series and for his work as art director at the groundbreaking U.K. women's magazine Nova in the 1960s and 1970s, Peccinotti was behind countless commercials, advertisements, editorials and fashion shoots—and he's still working today. When we asked him if he set out to create an iconic body of work, he said, "No! I just have always found women incredibly attractive and sensual, and when I take a picture, I look for that in them." To which we say, thank you, Harri. PECCINOTTI ON PECCINOTTI 1. "This was for a Vogue fashion story in which the model was always taking something off. The way I look at things and take pictures today is the same as it was in the 1960s and 1970s: I try to shoot things as naturally as possible." 2. "I do have a sort of malady for thinking of girls with no clothes on first and then putting clothes on them, rather than the other way around." 3. "In the early 1970s, America closed the door for a year or two on photographs that showed nipples and crotches. These images might have been for an American magazine and were probably never used." 4. Peccinotti working on set. 5. "This was for a story about shoes for Nova. I tend to look at things graphically because I have always been an art director as well as a photographer." 6. "This was for a calendar for bathroom products. We shot it in a green bathtub at the Meurice hotel in Paris. We put green shampoo in it. I wasn't intending to take a self-portrait. I just happened to notice my reflection, so I purposely put it near her crotch." "I sold Pirelli the idea of going to L.A. to photograph girls surfing. We didn't take a model. We had no hairdresser, no makeup, no noth ing. When we arrived, there were no girls surfing and no waves. So we photographed girls we found on the beach. Being a close-up freak, I took graphic pictures of them. We stayed three weeks; it was real reportage." "I was shooting a vodka com mercial, and the model's boyfriend visited her on set. I just took the pic ture." 9. "This was for a Nova story about not shaving. When the editor saw it he said, 'We can't publish that,' so I told him it was an underarm." 10. "Nova was special because it was a trial run to see if there was a market for an intelligent magazine targeted at women. I was completely free to do anything." II. "Not a lot of people were photographing black models at the time. The necklace shot was for Nova, the cigar for a magazine called Adam and the fist for the French newspaper Le Matin de Paris. The black-and-white photograph is of Donyale Luna, Warhol girl and the first black supermodel, for Vogue U.K. I like beautiful women and don't care what color they are."
