Although Kirchherr shot very few photographs after 1967, her early work has been exhibited in Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Vienna, and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

[3] During World War II, she was evacuated to the safety of the Baltic Sea where she remembered seeing dead bodies on the shore (after the ships Cap Arcona and the SS Deutschland had been bombed and sunk) and the destruction in Hamburg when she returned.

[4] After her graduation, Kirchherr enrolled in the Meisterschule für Mode, Textil, Grafik und Werbung in Hamburg, as she wanted to study fashion design but demonstrated a talent for black-and-white photography.

[5][6] Reinhard Wolf, the school's main photographic tutor, convinced her to switch courses and promised that he would hire her as his assistant when she graduated.

[3] In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kirchherr and her art school friends were involved in the European existentialist movement whose followers were later nicknamed "Exis" by Lennon.

[11] In 1960, after Kirchherr and Vollmer had had an argument with Voormann, he wandered down the Reeperbahn (in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg) and heard music coming from the Kaiserkeller club.

Voormann walked in and watched a performance by a group called the Beatles: Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Sutcliffe and Best, their drummer at the time.

[14] The trio of friends had never heard rock n' roll before, having previously listened to only trad jazz, with some Nat King Cole and The Platters mixed in.

Meeting the Beatles was something very special for her, although she knew that English people would think that she ate sauerkraut, and would comment on her heavy German accent, but they made jokes about it together.

[11] Lennon would make sarcastic remarks from the stage, saying "You Krauts, we won the war", knowing that very few Germans in the audience spoke English, but sailors from English-speaking countries present would roar with laughter.

[18] Kirchherr asked the Beatles if they would mind letting her take photographs of them in a photo session, which impressed them, as other groups had only snapshots that were taken by friends.

The next morning Kirchherr took photographs with a Rolleicord camera,[19] at a fairground in a municipal park called Hamburger Dom which was close to the Reeperbahn,[13] and in the afternoon she took them all (minus Best, who decided not to go) to her mother's house in Altona.

[3][21] Kirchherr later supplied Sutcliffe and the other Beatles with Preludin, which, when taken with beer, made them feel euphoric and helped to keep them awake until the early hours of the morning.

[24] When Powell visited Hamburg with Dot Rhone (McCartney's girlfriend at the time) in April 1961, they stayed at Kirchherr's house.

"[29][30] In 1995, Kirchherr told BBC Radio Merseyside: "All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut.

Everybody was expecting a strange beatnik artist from Hamburg, but Kirchherr turned up at the Sutcliffes' house at 37 Aigburth Drive, Liverpool, bearing a single long-stemmed orchid in her hand as a present, and dressed in a round-necked cashmere sweater and tailored skirt.

[9] In 1999, a companion book called Hamburg Days was published (a two-volume limited edition), containing a set of photographs by Kirchherr and "memory drawings" by Voormann.

"[40] Kirchherr expressed respect for other photographers, such as Annie Leibovitz (because of the humour in her work), Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Jim Rakete and Reinhard Wolf (German Wikipedia), and French film-makers François Truffaut, and Jean Cocteau.

[4] Kirchherr said that her favourite photos are the ones she took of Sutcliffe by the Baltic sea, and of Lennon and Harrison in her attic room at 45a Eimsbütteler Strasse.

[19][28] In July 2001, Kirchherr visited Liverpool to open an exhibition of her work at the Mathew Street art gallery, which is close to the former site of The Cavern Club.

[41] Kirchherr's work has been exhibited internationally in places, such as Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Vienna,[42] and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

[28] Starting in the mid-1990s, Kirchherr and business partner Krüger operated the K&K photography shop in Hamburg, offering custom vintage prints, books and artwork for sale.

[43] He praised her involvement with the band as "immeasurable", and credited her as an "intelligent, inspirational, innovative, daring, artistic, awake, aware, beautiful, smart, loving and uplifting friend to many".