The Austrian fashion photographer Elfie Semotan, best known for her work with designer Helmut Lang, has died.
Semotan broke through in the mid 1970s when she produced a series of adverts for Austrian lingerie brand Palmers. Each featured a model in a provocative pose alongside the strapline ‘Trau dich doch’ (‘I dare you’). While the images were criticised by some feminist voices, others praised the strength of the women portrayed.
It was her work with Lang however that really made her name: working on his collections and runway shows for two decades, her stripped back portraiture mirroring the seeming simplicity of the designer’s look. She also took various portraits of artworld figures, including Louise Bourgeois, Maria Lassnig, Daniel Richter and Christopher Wool.
Semotan was born in Wels and studied fashion in Vienna. After working briefly in Paris as a model, she moved back to Vienna in 1971. In 1973 she married artist Kurt Kocherscheidt until his death in 1992; remarrying in 1996, this time to the artist Martin Kippenberger, though she was to be widowed again within a year.
