Born in Hamburg in 1968, Frederike Helwig studied photography at Bournemouth College of Art and Design from 1992 - 94 and received her first assignment whilst still at college from Terry Jones at i.D. From here she was asked to work for all the exciting magazines at the time, i.D, The Face, Dazed & Confused and Vogue. When asked about that time, Helwig remarks “it was really my school, London in the 90s was all about pushing boundaries and trying to change what we thought was the boring world of commercial photography in to something more interesting. Our hero’s lived and worked very close to us, we were a small community poised on the brink of greatness. And some of us made it, some of us didn’t”.
It was during this time that she began to develop her loyal group of clients including brands such as Adidas & Nike, Art Directors such as Peter Miles and Donald Schneider & Lina Kustovskaya. This group of very individualistic creatives saw in Fredi the chance to create imagery that was glamourous but that crossed between the two genres of documentary photography & fashion photography. Fredi skillfully references such greats as Lindbergh & Avedon but brings her particular combination of irreverence and respect for what these photographers have achieved to her own work. The fashion crops of portrait, head and shoulders and the full body shot are evident all the way through her stories in the same way as they are in Meisel, Klein & McDean but with Fredi it is made to look effortless and accessible, playful and yet glamorous.
In 2002 Lina Kustovskaya called and asked her to shoot for a new magazine she was doing with Conde Nast, called Teen Vogue. Here began a 6 year collaboration and Fredi became an overnight success in New York. It was this this momentum took her to live there in 2005 until the birth of her son, in 2007. She started to shoot regularly for American Vogue, Vanity Fair, American GQ and was put under contract with Conde Nast to shoot for Teen Vogue from 2005.
