Summary
- CAMERA WORK in Berlin presents 30 selected Michel Comte photographs from the 1980s and 1990s.
- The exhibition features personalities including Helena Christensen, Tina Turner, Jeremy Irons, Iggy Pop and Mike Tyson.
- The exhibition closes on August 29, 2026, and admission to the gallery is free.
- The selection combines vintage prints from CAMERA WORK with edition works by Éditions Comte.
Event Details
CAMERA WORK in Berlin brings together 30 selected works by Michel Comte from the 1980s and 1990s, with the exhibition set to close on August 29, 2026.
The “Michel Comte” exhibition opened on July 11 and offers a concentrated look at the period that established the Swiss photographer as one of the major names in fashion and celebrity photography. The selection includes vintage prints from the CAMERA WORK collection and edition works by Éditions Comte, featuring subjects such as Helena Christensen, Jeremy Irons, Iggy Pop, Tina Turner, Mike Tyson and Carla Bruni.
The importance of the exhibition goes beyond nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s. These images were created during a period before digital retouching took on the central role it has in commercial photography today, highlighting the importance of lighting, the relationship between photographer and subject, and the decisive moment of exposure. CAMERA WORK specifically points to Comte’s strong contrasts in lighting and his direct, almost raw approach to the people he photographed.
30 works, from Veruschka to Mike Tyson
Among the photographs on display is the 1990 portrait of Veruschka, a work CAMERA WORK also lists as a unique vintage 35 x 28cm gelatin silver print. From the same year comes the portrait of Jeremy Irons with a horse in London, also documented as a gelatin silver print.
In 1993, Comte photographed Helena Christensen in Paris for Italian Vogue and Tina Turner in Los Angeles for Vanity Fair. The exhibition also includes images of Iggy Pop, Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Hopkins, Louise Bourgeois and Michael Schumacher, illustrating the extraordinary range of personalities who appeared in front of his camera.
Mike Tyson, photographed at a training camp in Ohio in 1990, is another notable inclusion, while “Beauty and the Beast,” featuring Jaime Rishar and an orangutan in the Mojave Desert in 1996, moves away from conventional celebrity portraiture and reveals a more staged side of Comte’s work.
Some of the material is strongly sensual and includes nudity, which explains the NSFW warning attached to Amateur Photographer’s coverage of the exhibition.
The photographer behind the celebrity imagery of the 1980s and 1990s
Michel Comte was born in Zurich in 1954, and his first professional path was not behind a camera but in contemporary art restoration, specialising among other things in works by Andy Warhol and Yves Klein. He met Karl Lagerfeld in 1979, followed by his first major commercial assignment for Chloé, which quickly brought him into the world of international fashion.
His close collaborations with publications including Vogue Italia, L’Uomo Vogue, Vanity Fair and Interview, as well as brands and fashion houses including Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Givenchy and Gucci, coincided with the period when supermodels and celebrity culture were becoming a dominant part of global visual culture. The Éditions Comte archive covering the period from 1979 to 2007 now contains more than 550,000 negatives and digital files.
That scale matters: the Berlin show is not intended as a complete retrospective, but rather as an attempt to isolate 30 images from a far larger body of work and demonstrate the photographic language that made Comte instantly recognisable.
From fashion to humanitarian projects and art
Comte’s career was not limited to celebrities, magazines and advertising campaigns. During the 1990s, he worked in war-torn and affected regions in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, photographing in places including Bosnia, Angola, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan and Somalia.
In 1994, he also created the “Save Safe Sex” campaign aimed at challenging the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. This parallel activity reveals a very different side of a photographer who is most widely associated with the glamour of fashion and celebrity culture.
In 2009, he officially withdrew from fashion photography and increasingly shifted his attention to art, with later projects exploring subjects including natural landscapes and environmental change.
Practical information
The exhibition is being held at CAMERA WORK Gallery, Kantstrasse 149, 10623 Berlin, and closes on Saturday, August 29, 2026. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 6pm, and admission is free. For anyone currently in Berlin, only a few days remain to see the 30 Michel Comte photographs in person.
What we think
The exhibition’s real value lies in the opportunity to examine a photographic language developed before digital post-processing became an integral part of commercial imagery. That does not mean analogue photography was “unprocessed”; choices have always existed during shooting, development and printing. Comte’s images, however, are a reminder of how much weight could be carried by lighting, communication with the subject and the moment in front of the lens. The selection of 30 works therefore functions not only as a historical record of 1980s and 1990s celebrity culture, but also as an interesting lesson in portrait photography for today’s photographers.
Frequently asked questions
When does the Michel Comte exhibition in Berlin close?
The official closing date is Saturday, August 29, 2026. CAMERA WORK confirms the date both on the exhibition page and on its current homepage.
Where is CAMERA WORK and how much is admission?
The gallery is located at Kantstrasse 149, 10623 Berlin. It is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 6pm and admission is free.
How many works are on display?
The exhibition features 30 selected works, combining vintage prints from the CAMERA WORK collection with edition works by Éditions Comte.
Which famous people appear in the photographs?
The exhibition includes photographs of Helena Christensen, Jeremy Irons, Iggy Pop, Tina Turner, Mike Tyson, Carla Bruni, Anthony Hopkins, Louise Bourgeois and Michael Schumacher, among others.
