Harri Peccinotti

Harry Peccinotti (also known as Harri Peccinotti) (born 1935) is an English photographer, best known for his erotic work, most famously two Pirelli Calendars published in 1968 and 1969. He remains an influential figure in art and fashion photography.

His work as art director of the UK fashion magazine Nova is widely considered as being influential for its graphic design as well as photography. He published a retrospective of his life's work called book HP (2009).

Born in London, his career ranged during the 1950s from commercial artist to musician. At this time he designed record sleeves for Esquire Records and book jackets for Penguin, and later became an advertising art director and photographer.

Peccinotti was one of a number of art directors at agencies such as Crawford’s and J Walter Thompson. In 1965 he was hired as the first Art director of Nova magazine, remembered today for its innovative design, typography, subject matter, photography and quality of witing. Besides his role as art director, he also made photographs for the magazine. At Nova, Peccinotti became one of the first professional fashion photographers to photograph and publish photos of black models, using them extensively in his fashion shoots.

He stated in an interview:

“Nova started as an experiment. The thinking behind it came from the fact that there were no magazines at the time for intelligent women. All the magazines treated women like they were drudges and housewives, and focused on subjects like cooking and knitting. But the women’s liberation movement was strong at the time and there were a lot of good female writers. Nova’s aim was to talk about what women were really interested in: politics, careers, health, sex. George Newnes, a large press company, threw some money in, just to see if anyone was interested in a magazine like that, and so it started.”

He also art directed Flair, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and Vogue. He quit art-directing to become a full-time photographer, still creating content for many of the same magazines. His list of regular magazine commissioners grew to include Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Town, Queen, and Rolling Stone.

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