The exhibition ‘Rico Puhlmann. Fashion Photography 50s – 90s’ offers a comprehensive insight into the graphic and photographic work of Rico Puhlmann, who worked for over 40 years first as an illustrator and then as a fashion photographer for major magazines such as “Brigitte”, “petra”, “Constanze” or internationally “Vogue”, “Harper’s Bazaar”, “Glamour” or “GQ”. The most sought-after models of their time stood in front of his camera: Gloria Friedrich and Gitta Schilling, Cheryl Tiegs and Jerry Hall, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. His photos appeared on numerous magazine covers and his photo spreads on glossy paper filled several double-page spreads in a row.
Image above: Rico Puhlmann, cotton knit T-shirts by Elaine Post Ltd. and Knitquake, 1971, colour slide, 24 x 36 mm, © Rico Puhlmann Archive (published in ‘T-Shirts Illustrated’, Glamour (USA), No. 6, February 1971)
Puhlmann began his career as a fashion illustrator in his native city of Berlin, where ‘Berlin chic’ reached new heights after the Second World War. He was repeatedly commissioned to draw the designs of fashion houses and then increasingly to photograph them – for journals and company publications. He shaped the image of this West Berlin fashion in the same way as his colleagues F. C. Gundlach, Regi Relang and Helmut Newton. Their photographs are visual testimonies to an unwritten dress code around 1960.
Op and pop art, enthusiasm for space travel, the London swinging sixties, the adaptation of dress forms and fabric patterns from a wide range of cultures changed fashion in the 1960s and, at the same time, the image of fashion. Editors sent photographers to ever more distant places to take fashion shots. Technical developments such as flash technology, the emergence of colour film, Polaroid and the more flexible 35mm gradually expanded the scope of photographic design.
Due to the declining economy of the upscale Berlin fashion industry and the resulting loss of importance of fashion in Berlin, Puhlmann reorientated himself and moved to New York in 1970. He received his first photo assignments in his new place of work from the magazines ‘Glamour’ and ‘Harper’s Bazaar’. At the same time, he shot fashion films for the ‘Modejournal’ programme produced by Sender Freies Berlin (SFB), making him one of the pioneers of the ‘American look’ in Europe.
Due to the declining economy of the upscale Berlin fashion industry and the resulting loss of importance of fashion in Berlin, Puhlmann reorientated himself and moved to New York in 1970. He received his first photo assignments in his new place of work from the magazines ‘Glamour’ and ‘Harper’s Bazaar’. At the same time, he shot fashion films for the ‘Modejournal’ programme produced by Sender Freies Berlin (SFB), making him one of the pioneers of the ‘American look’ in Europe.
In the mid-1970s, Rico Puhlmann was an established fashion photographer in New York. His photos tell of a new freedom. It is no longer the stilted poses, the accompanying gentleman, the cultivated and cultivated metropolitan dream, but naturalness, movement, spontaneity, informality and interpersonal closeness that determine the subjects of the pictures. In the two models Cheryl Tiegs and Patti Hansen, Rico Puhlmann found the perfect counterpart to convey this new attitude to life.
Rico Puhlmann worked continuously for ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ until the early 1990s and his work contributed to the change in the image of women, which became increasingly self-confident. Around 1980, he received exclusive commissions for various issues of ‘Fashions of the Times’, the fashion supplement of the ‘New York Times’. In the early 1980s, he described the new self-image of men in terms of fashion, styling and body care in a subtle, sensitive visual language for the men’s magazine ‘GQ’.
In the meantime, ever larger editorial teams were involved in the fashion image. In addition to Rico Puhlmann, fashion and accessories editors, art directors, make-up artists and hairdressers were involved in creating the images. Back in the 1960s, Puhlmann and the respective editors selected the designs for the fashion shows themselves, as well as the locations and models. He checked the styling and make-up after the models had done their make-up and dressed themselves. He directed poses and gestures and selected props and accessories.
Puhlmann died in an aeroplane crash in 1996. A book publication on his work was already being planned. A return to Berlin with a teaching position at the Berlin University of the Arts was also being negotiated and a first digital camera had already been purchased. Even after more than 40 years of creativity, Rico Puhlmann still had plans.
The majority of the exhibits come from Rico Puhlmann’s work archive, which is managed by his brother Klaus Puhlmann and his wife Anne and has been generously made available for the exhibition.
The exhibition ‘Rico Puhlmann. Fashion Photography 50s – 90s’ honours Puhlmann’s career and in particular his work for fashion journals. It looks at various aspects of fashion, photography, press and cultural history. His graphic and photographic work is exemplary of fashion journalism from the 1950s to the 1990s.
The exhibition is curated by Dr Britta Bommert, Head of the Fashion Image Collection, Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and co-curated by Hans-Michael Koetzle, Munich, in close collaboration with the Rico Puhlmann Archive (Anne and Klaus Puhlmann), Berlin.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by Kettler, Dortmund, with contributions by Britta Bommert, Gerlind Hector, Hans-Michael Koetzle, Adelheid Rasche, Marie Arleth Skov and Christine Waidenschlager..
WHEN?
Opening: Thursday, 26 June 2025, 7 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 27 June 2025 until Sunday, 15 February 2026
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Fri – Sun 11am – 7pm, Thu 11am – 8pm
WHERE?
Museum für Fotografie
Jebensstraße 2
10623 Berlin
