For Bottega Veneta, Campaigns Are an Art Form

Bottega Veneta’s spring/summer 2010 campaign, shot by Nan Goldin. Photo: Nan Goldin/Courtesy of Bottega Veneta

Since 2002, shortly after he took over as creative director of Bottega Veneta, Tomas Maier has been recruiting world-renowned talent for his label’s ad campaigns. A longtime photo collector himself, Maier has worked with artists and photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and dozens more. “It’s always someone who I admire greatly,” Maier told the Cut, describing the working process as “very clear and direct.” After deciding on a collaborator, he describes the collection, sees what ideas it provokes, and moves quickly from there: “I like to get the campaign shot without any outside intervention, so that the results can be as pure as possible.”

They may be pure, but they’re also cinematic — mostly atmospherically, but sometimes literally, like Alex Prager’s spring/summer 2011 campaign swarming with Hitchcock birds. Those photos and over 1,000 more are packed in Maier’s 656-page tome Bottega Veneta: Art of Collaboration, which Rizzoli published just this month. Click through the slideshow for an exclusive look inside, including shots by Nan Goldin and models like Freja Beha.