The Most Famous

PHOTOGRAPHERS from Germany

This page contains a list of the greatest German Photographers. The pantheon dataset contains 148 Photographers, 18 of which were born in Germany. This makes Germany the birth place of the 2nd most number of Photographers.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Photographers of all time. This list of famous German Photographers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of German Photographers.

1. Helmut Newton (1920 - 2004)

With an HPI of 66.22, Helmut Newton is the most famous German Photographer. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages on wikipedia.

Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."

2. Heinrich Hoffmann (1885 - 1957)

With an HPI of 63.85, Heinrich Hoffmann is the 2nd most famous German Photographer. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Heinrich Hoffmann (12 September 1885 – 16 December 1957) was Adolf Hitler's official photographer, and a Nazi politician and publisher, who was a member of Hitler's intimate circle. Hoffmann's photographs were a significant part of Hitler's propaganda campaign to present himself and the Nazi Party as a significant mass phenomenon. He received royalties from all uses of Hitler's image, which made him a millionaire over the course of Hitler's rule. After the Second World War he was tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison for war profiteering. He was classified by the Allies' Art Looting Investigators to be a "major offender" in Nazi art plundering of Jews, as both art dealer and collector and his art collection, which contained many artworks looted from Jews, was ordered confiscated by the Allies. Hoffmann's sentence was reduced to 4 years on appeal, and he was released from prison in 1950. In 1956, the Bavarian State ordered all art under its control and formerly possessed by Hoffmann to be returned to him.

3. Gunter Sachs (1932 - 2011)

With an HPI of 61.68, Gunter Sachs is the 3rd most famous German Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Fritz Gunter Sachs colloquially Gunter Sachs (14 November 1932 – 7 May 2011) also Gunter Sachs von Opel was a German-born Swiss industrial heir, socialite, art collector, photographer and author. He was primarily known for his jet set lifestyle in St. Moritz and St. Tropez and then gained international fame as a documentary film-maker, documentary photographer, and as third husband of Brigitte Bardot.

4. Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 - 1931)

With an HPI of 60.60, Wilhelm von Gloeden is the 4th most famous German Photographer. His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Wilhelm Iwan Friederich August von Gloeden (September 16, 1856 – February 16, 1931), commonly known as Baron von Gloeden, was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boys, which usually featured props such as wreaths or amphoras, suggesting a setting in the Greece or Italy of antiquity. His work demonstrates the controlled use of lighting as well utilizing elegant poses of his models. His innovations include the use of photographic filters and special body makeup (a mixture of milk, olive oil, and glycerin) to disguise skin blemishes. His work, both landscapes and nudes, drew wealthy tourists to Sicily, particularly gay men uncomfortable in northern Europe.

5. August Sander (1876 - 1964)

With an HPI of 58.01, August Sander is the 5th most famous German Photographer. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

August Sander (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His first book Face of our Time (German: Antlitz der Zeit) was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century". Sander's work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, but he is best known for his portraits, as exemplified by his series People of the 20th Century. In this series, he aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic.

6. Guillermo Kahlo (1871 - 1941)

With an HPI of 56.16, Guillermo Kahlo is the 6th most famous German Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Guillermo Kahlo (born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo; 26 October 1871 – 14 April 1941) was a German-Mexican photographer. He photographically documented important architectural works, churches, streets, landmarks, as well as industries and companies in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century; because of this, his work has not only artistic value but also historical and documental importance. He was the father of painter Frida Kahlo.

7. Andreas Gursky (b. 1955)

With an HPI of 55.37, Andreas Gursky is the 7th most famous German Photographer. His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often using a high point of view. His works reach some of the highest prices in the art market among living photographers. His photograph Rhein II was sold at Christie's for $4,338,500 on 8 November 2011. At the time it was the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction. Gursky shares a studio with Laurenz Berges, Thomas Ruff and Axel Hütte on the Hansaallee, in Düsseldorf. The building, a former electricity station, was transformed into an artists studio and living quarters, in 2001, by architects Herzog & de Meuron, of Tate Modern fame. In 2010–11, the architects worked again on the building, designing a gallery in the basement.

8. Astrid Kirchherr (1938 - 2020)

With an HPI of 55.22, Astrid Kirchherr is the 8th most famous German Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Astrid Kirchherr ([ˈastʁɪt ˈkɪʁçhɛʁ]; 20 May 1938 – 12 May 2020) was a German photographer and artist known for her association with the Beatles (along with her friends Klaus Voormann and Jürgen Vollmer) and her photographs of the band's original members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – during their early days in Hamburg. Kirchherr met artist Stuart Sutcliffe in the Kaiserkeller bar in Hamburg in 1960, where Sutcliffe was playing bass with the Beatles, and was later engaged to him, before his death in 1962. Although Kirchherr shot very few photographs after 1967, her early work has been exhibited in Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Vienna, and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. She published three limited-edition books of photographs.

9. Erich Salomon (1886 - 1944)

With an HPI of 51.85, Erich Salomon is the 9th most famous German Photographer. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Erich Salomon (28 April 1886 – 7 July 1944) was a German Jewish news photographer known for his pictures in the diplomatic and legal professions and the innovative methods he used to acquire them.

10. Gisèle Freund (1908 - 2000)

With an HPI of 51.26, Gisèle Freund is the 10th most famous German Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; 19 December 1908 – 31 March 2000) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book, Photographie et société (1974), is a expanded edition of her seminal 1936 dissertation. It was the first sociohistorical study on photography as a democratic medium of self-representation in the age of technological reproduction. With this first doctoral thesis on photography at the Sorbonne, she was one of the first women habilitated there. Freund's major contributions to photography include using the Leica Camera (with its ability to house 35 mm film rolls with 36 frames) for documentary reportage and pioneering Kodachrome and Agfacolor positive film for colour portraits of writers and artists, which allowed her to develop a "uniquely candid portraiture style" that distinguishes her in 20th-century photography. Politically left-leaning all her life, she became president of the French Union of Photographers in 1977. In 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand, and was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1985, she became the first photographer to be honored with a retrospective at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris.

People

Pantheon has 20 people classified as German photographers born between 1856 and 1968. Of these 20, 4 (20.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living German photographers include Andreas Gursky, Ellen von Unwerth, and Thomas Struth. The most famous deceased German photographers include Helmut Newton, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Gunter Sachs. As of April 2024, 2 new German photographers have been added to Pantheon including Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Thomas Struth.