Juergen Teller Channels the Art-World Glamour of Venice for Bottega Veneta

From the stately Palazzo Contarini Polignac to the imposing Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello—Venice does not lack for landmarks that bottle history and grandeur. Seen through Juergen Teller’s eye, the city comes newly limned with a raw, unfiltered elegance. 

The German photographer has lensed Bottega Veneta’s new campaign, showcasing the luxury house’s Summer 2026 wares against the backdrop of Venice’s famed locales. In one shot, model Liya Kebede poses alongside a statue at the Venice Giardini while clad in an oversized trenchcoat; another image sees Anine Van Velzen, bundled in a radiant fiberglass jacket, standing amid the blooms at the Angolo Fiorito flower shop outside the Palazzo Franchetti.

Bottega Veneta Summer 2026 campaign, photographed by Juergen Teller. Photo courtesy of Bottega Veneta.

The campaign arrives ahead of the 2026 Venice Biennale, which opens May 9 at various venues across the city including the Giardini. Teller has nodded to this artistic heritage in his pictures, while alluding to cultural icons such as Peggy Guggenheim and Truman Capote who reveled in the floating city. 

Throughout, we catch glimpses of a painted folding screen, a faded tapestry, and a carved lintel, captured from the inside of palazzos. These buildings also so enraptured Claude Monet that he immortalized them on canvas—among them Palazzo Contarini, which he painted in 1908.

Bottega Veneta Summer 2026 campaign, photographed by Juergen Teller. Photo courtesy of Bottega Veneta.

Of course, Venice is not the sole attraction in Teller’s photographs. Summer 2026 marks Louise Trotter’s debut collection after joining Bottega Veneta as creative director last year. Her first act, she told Vogue, was to dive into the label’s 50-year archives in Montebello Vicentino. “You have to know where a house comes from,” she said, “in order to move forward.”

Unveiled in September 2025, her first designs for the house presented visual callbacks to those roots, threading its signature leather-weave motif through her modern constructions. But they also offered thrilling spins on the house’s craftsmanship, as seen in her use of recycled fiberglass in bright colors on skirts and sweaters.

Bottega Veneta Summer 2026 campaign, photographed by Juergen Teller. Photo courtesy of Bottega Veneta.

In Trotter’s hands, Bottega Veneta’s famed carryalls have been newly reimagined as well. The Lauren bag has been blown up to oversized proportions with everyday use in mind, while the Knot bag arrives with a softer, more pliable body. These bags, Trotter said, should “feel like an extension of the person.”

Bottega Veneta Summer 2026 campaign, photographed by Juergen Teller. Photo courtesy of Bottega Veneta.

Like Trotter’s first collection, the house’s new campaign serves as a return of sorts to its origins in the Veneto. Its latest collaboration with Teller also picks up a partnership begun in 2015, when the photographer shot a campaign for the house at Casa Mollino in Turin. 

Teller, meanwhile, is hot off “you are invited,” the sprawling 2025 exhibition that surveyed his decades-spanning practice. The show brought together his iconic fashion images—for the likes of Marc Jacobs, Vivienne Westwood, and Helmut Lang—as well as more personal projects such as his recent “Symposium of Love” series, featuring him and his wife Dovile Drizyte. “For me, it’s not just photography,” he told Dazed of the show. “It’s thoughts, ideas, life.”