Michel Comte’s Berlin Exhibition Revisits Four Decades of Fashion, Fame, and Social Image
A new solo exhibition at Camera Work in Berlin will trace the arc of Swiss photographer Michel Comte’s career through 30 works selected by the artist himself. Opening July 11, 2026, and on view through August 29, the presentation brings together vintage prints from the Camera Work collection and editioned works from Editions Comte, offering a concentrated look at a body of work that helped define the visual language of late 20th-century fashion and celebrity photography.
Comte, a Swiss photographer born in Zurich, did not begin in front of the camera. He started in contemporary art restoration, developing a specialization in the work of Andy Warhol and Yves Klein before photography became his professional path. After moving to Paris in 1979, he was discovered by Karl Lagerfeld, who assigned him work for Chloé. That early break led to commissions for Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as campaigns for Chanel and Giorgio Armani.
Over more than four decades, Comte has photographed Naomi Campbell, Iman, Mike Tyson, and Tina Turner, while also creating images that became closely tied to major brands including Nike, Lancôme, Mercedes-Benz, and Hennessy. His pictures move easily between editorial glamour and commercial precision, but they also reveal a sharper social register. The 1994 Save Safe Sex Campaign responded to the AIDS crisis and helped raise more than $1 million, while the 1996 Beauty and the Beast series drew attention to endangered species.
The exhibition arrives as photography continues to be reassessed not only as a record of style, but as a force that shapes public memory. In Comte’s case, the archive is especially revealing: fashion, celebrity, activism, and branding are not separate chapters, but overlapping parts of the same visual era.
