Horst Tappe mainly photographed personalities from the fields of art and humanities. From the 1960s onwards, painters, actors, writers, musicians and heads of state succeeded one another in front of his Hasselblad lens. His greatest successes include portraits of painters Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Oskar Kokoschka, actors Peter Ustinov, Sophia Loren and Noel Coward, writers Vladimir Nabokov, Ian Fleming and Harold Pinter, orchestra conductors Pierre Boulez and Igor Stravinsky, the musician Pablo Casals and statesmen Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. The creation of the Horst Tappe Foundation was born out of a friendship. It was in 1999 that the world-famous photographer met Sarah Benoit and Charlotte Lukaszewski, two art historians studying at Lausanne University. They were mounting an exhibition devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, and Horst Tappe owned a famous series of photographs of the writer. The exhibition, created in Montreux, was well received by the public and the international press and travelled to several European countries as well as the USA. This fruitful collaboration forged a professional and friendly bond between the three. They decided to continue to develop the potential of the photographs which, until then, had been reserved for the illustration of articles and publications. Before his death in 2005, the photographer spoke of his fear that his life's work would sink into oblivion. Charlotte Lukaszewski and Sarah Benoit resolved to create a foundation in his memory. Bridgeman Images is proud to represent the Foundation and to help keep Horst Tappe's remarkable photography available.