The love of animals by Walter Schels and Tory Burch

ART NEWS

The love of animals by Walter Schels

and Tory Burch

September 2024

Katze 1994 Copyright Walter Schels

Art and fashion often seek proximity to each other. A very unusual co-operation has been established between the renowned German photographer Walter Schels, who is over 80 years old, and Tory Burch, US billionaire and founder of the Tory Burch fashion and lifestyle empire. Burch's latest adverts feature bags and fashion with Schels' famous cat and two more animal motifs are said to be in the works. What is known so far.

Walter Schels is an internationally renowned photographer, particularly for his animal photography. He recently visited Düsseldorf in person to open his exhibition TIERE at the Noir Blanche gallery, which specialises in photography. At the time, none of the visitors had any idea that the photographs would soon become famous in the world of high fashion. According to Schel's galerist Volker Marschall, who told Alethea Magazine, the fashion collection came as a surprise to him too. It is not known exactly how the influential Tory Burch became aware of Walter Schel's work. What is certain, galerist Marschall tells us, is that Tory Burch's team approached the artist directly for the licences to the three motifs.

Unveiled in the USA

However, the whole thing has been going on for some time. Schel's cat was already shown in January 2024 in a pop-up designed for Tory Burch by Humberto Leon on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and was to become the lead motif for the 2024 Resort collection. Schel's cat was used as the wallpaper for the pop-up. Further photos that have now been revealed show Schel's rabbits adorning the façade of the Tory Burch boutique on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. The maxi image of the cat is said to be inside the boutique. The designer obviously found the card motif so exciting that she has produced a whole range of collection pieces. There are now handbags, T-shirts, clothing and shoes.

The human element to Walter Schels's photographs

Burch told WWD: ‘There is a human element to Walter's photographs that comes across in the way he looks at the animals and the way they look at him.’ And adds ‘He treats animals with the same respect as humans’. Store designer Humberto Leon: ‘Tory is an art lover, so I included that aspect. I wanted it to feel like you were walking into an exhibition.’

The artist

Large parts of Schels' works from the TIERE from the Noir Blanche exhibition have also been shown at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

The photographer Walter Schels (*1936 in Landshut) grew up with animals. As he told his gallery owner, this shaped his relationship to animals and his photography. Schels' first animal portraits were taken in the mid-1980s: large companies such as VW, Panasonic and Blaupunkt commissioned Schels to take pictures of chimpanzees and dogs for advertising campaigns - often in funny poses and almost always in colour. Back then, he secretly photographed his black and white portraits without the art directors realising. Later, he also photographed animals without being commissioned, until the 2000s. Schels then became really famous for his character studies of celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and Angela Merkel. Always in front of a white or black studio background, without a smile, looking directly into the camera. ‘The fact that he simply transferred a convention of representation developed from the human image to animal photography is a provocation,‘ says photo historian Klaus Honnef about Schels’ animal portraits.

Eye contact, Schels told his gallery owner, was for him the access to the essence of his subject in both human and animal subjects and thus ‘the key to a good portrait’. But because animals cannot be instructed to look into the camera, an animal portrait is ‘a matter of luck’.

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See Schels work at Noir Blanche gallery in Düsseldorf