Speaker Peter Knapp

Photographer, graphic designer, painter, film-maker, and art director Peter Knapp was born in 1931 in Bäretswill in the canton of Zürich. At 24, Knapp was invited to become the art director of the Galeries Lafayette department stores. However, a letter from Hélène Lazareff, offering him the position of art director on her weekly fashion title Elle, soon brought him back to Europe. Over the next six years, Knapp revolutionized the magazine through typography and, above all, photography, pioneering informal and dynamic fashion shoots. In the mid-1960s, he directed the French TV programme “Dim Dam Dom” alongside his former editor-in-chief, Daisy de Galard, and began to collaborate with designers Courrèges and Emanuel Ungaro.