Photographer helped shape Beatles’ style
NEW YORK — Astrid Kirchherr, the German photographer who shot some of the earliest and most striking images of the Beatles and helped shape their trendsetting visual style, has died at 81.
She died Tuesday in her native Hamburg, days before her 82nd birthday, her friend Kai-Uwe Franz said. Her death was first announced by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, who tweeted Friday that Kirchherr made an “immeasurable” contribution to the group and was “intelligent, inspirational, innovative, daring, artistic, awake, aware, beautiful, smart, loving and uplifting.” According to the German publication Die Zeit, she died of a “short, serious illness.”
“God bless Astrid a beautiful human being,” Ringo Starr tweeted. George Harrison’s widow, Olivia, tweeted that Kirchherr was “so thoughtful and kind and talented, with an eye to capture the soul.”
Kirchherr was a photographer’s assistant in Hamburg and part of the local art scene in 1960 when her then-boyfriend, Klaus Voormann, dropped in at a seedy club, the Kaiserkeller, and found himself mesmerized by a young British rock group: The five raw musicians from Liverpool had recently named themselves the Beatles. As she later recalled, Voormann then spent the next few days persuading Kirchherr to join him, a decision which profoundly changed her.
“It was like a merry-goround in my head, they looked absolutely astonishing,” Kirchherr later told Beatles biographer Bob Spitz. “My whole life changed in a couple of minutes. All I wanted was to be with them and to know them.”
Kirchherr had dreamed of photographing “charismatic” men and found her ideal subjects in the Beatles, especially their bassist at the time, Stuart Sutcliffe, a gifted painter. They quickly fell in love, though she spoke little English and he knew little German.
Kirchherr had an indirect influence on the Beatles’ transformation. The collarless jackets the Beatles favored in the early days of Beatlemania were inspired by Kirchherr’s wardrobe; Sutcliffe, who was around the same height as she, had begun wearing her collarless tops. Meanwhile, Voormann had been so self-conscious about his large ears that he grew his hair longer to cover them. Kirchherr loved his new style, what became the Beatles “mop top” — hair brushed forward, without gel, a look favored by other young German artists — and Sutcliffe soon wore his hair that way. The others, after some resistance, followed along.
Her love affair with Sutcliffe
was tragically brief. Sutcliffe collapsed and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1962, at age 21. Kirchherr later married twice, including to British drummer Gibson Kemp.
Over the decades after
Sutcliffe’s death, Kirchherr worked as a freelance photographer and an interior designer, and in recent years helped run a photography shop in Hamburg. She and Voormann remained close to the other Beatles.