In Love with Beauty offers an unprecedented chronological overview of the legendary Walter Pfeiffer, spanning four decades of photographic eroticism and wit, classical serenity and ornamental
playfulness, artifice and immediacy. Initially a painter, draughtsman and graphic designer, Pfeiffer used photographs as aide-memoirs for large-scale Photorealist pencil drawings, but quickly
developed a genuine passion for photography and, inspired by a Warholesque cast of handsome drifters and stylish women, began to evolve a trademark style. His breakthrough as a photographer
came with a series of images of a young man in drag that was included in Jean-Christophe Amman's seminal Transformer exhibition of 1974, which year also saw Pfeiffer's first solo photo
exhibition, reproduced here for the first time. His eponymous 1981 monograph conveyed a cheeky eroticism and a raw immediacy well suited to the Punk movement, also prefiguring the diaristic
photography of the 1990s. For most of the 1980s, Pfeiffer immersed himself in the project that culminated in Das Auge, die Gedanken, unentwegt wandernd, a series of close-up portraits of young
men. Pfeiffer dedicated himself to drawing for a number of years, returning to photography only in the late 1990s. In Love with Beauty proves that he has remained as youthful and exuberant as
ever.
