Perckhammer was born in
Merano, Austria-Hungary (now Italy) on 3 March 1895. In the First World War he served aboard the
SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth during the
Siege of Tsingtao and from 1917 to 1919 was a Japanese prisoner of war. He remained in China for several years after his release. In 1928 two volumes of his photographs were published in Berlin: one of carefully posed Chinese nudes, many taken in Macao brothels, under the title
Edle nacktheit in China (The Culture of the Nude in China), and one of Beijing
street photography, as
Peking. In 1929 he accompanied the airship
LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin on its round-the-world tour, as a photojournalist for the Berlin illustrated weekly
Die Woche. By 1932 Perckhammer had established a studio in Berlin, where his work included nudes and fashion photography. In the late 1930s some of his images were used as propaganda for the
Strength Through Joy movement, and during the Second World War he served as a war photographer attached to the
Waffen-SS. His studio in Berlin was bombed out in 1942, and after the war he returned to Merano. He died, aged 69, on 3 February 1965. == Sources ==