Peter Gowland’s Girls

9 June to 14 October 2018

"I try to make a nude look like she’s got clothes on… I prefer to cover, and glamorize and make things exciting." – Peter Gowland

The exhibition will present the exciting pin-up photographs of the American photographer Peter Gowland (1916 – 2010). He started taking glamor and pin-up photographs of young woman in and around Los Angeles in 1946. In 1954, The New York Times called him “America’s No. 1 Pin-up Photographer” early into his career and later situated his pictures “someplace between titillation and art”.

Peter Gowland found his models on Hollywood film sets and at agencies or beauty contests. He posed and photographed them in his studio or on the beaches from Los Angeles to Malibu, thus contributing significantly to the myth of California as a perpetually sunny postwar paradise.

"Peter Gowland’s Girls" will showcase some 200 works selected from Peter Gowland’s estate, which comprises tens of thousands of superb prints and slides, including the most sensational, most elegant and most daring pictures from his unparalleled career as a pin-up photographer. The exhibition will be displaying his portraits of stars like Joan Collins and Jayne Mansfield, his work for “Playboy” and “Rolling Stone”, and his pictures for innumerable calendars and magazines from the 1940s to the 1970s.

In cooperation with

Group Tours

Please book individual guided tours in English or different languages under: service.museumsdienst@museenkoeln.de .