For his latest exhibition, renowned fashion photographer Mario Testinowent home — to Peru.
Trekking repeatedly over five years to Cusco City, once the capital of the Inca Empire, Lima-born Testino discovered, while on assignment for British Vogue, a vast trove of costumes from the region so rich in color and heritage that he found himself delving deeper and deeper into a desire to document them.
Coupled with inspiration from Martin Chambi (one of the first indigenous Latin American photographers) and Javier Silva (who has documented festivals in Peru), Testino captured a series of richly-saturated images showcasing traditional and festival clothing for his latest exhibition, Alta Moda, opening at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York on November 20.
Alta Moda is a play on words on several levels. It literally means ‘high fashion’ in Spanish, but is also a nod to Testino’s work in fashion magazines, and alludes to the fact that Cusco, one of Peru's highest mountains, has an elevation of about 10,800 feet.
Speaking to Blouin Artinfo, London-based Testino acknowledged these 27 works were a departure from the celebrity portraits he is perhaps best known for — chief among them being the ones of Princess Diana taken just months before her death in 1997 — but said they took him on a journey that was both fascinating and educational.
“The magic of Peru is that even though the country has developed at great speed, they are hanging on to a lot of their traditions. Despite living in England — probably a country that hangs on to the most to its traditions — it’s quite interesting to find this in my own country,” said Testino, adding he would like to trigger exhibition-goers’ curiosity about the indigenous cultures too.
“I realized many years ago that the biggest gift I can give, because I get unlimited access to palaces, schools, theaters, and collections, is sharing what I see,” he explained. “What I try to do with my work is trigger something. I would love for people to come [to this exhibition] and discover something they didn’t know existed. And then maybe they can give me back even more information.”
Here, he sounds off on the difference between photographing famous and unknown faces; the blankness of new, young models; and of course, his muses.
You mentioned trying to fit as much time and history into each of these frames. What is it you’re trying to tell?
Most of the dresses, through their design, define what family you come from, what area you come from, what your profession is, your marital status. And costumes for festivities represent characters in folk tales that they tell through their dances. Every outfit corresponds to a different dance and attitude. I was so blown away by the variety of the costumes that I thought it would be a good idea to document them, because these are things that you don’t know how long will last. I find it really beautiful, all these different layers of things that they wear under their neck, and the way they make these hats is so complicated. I guess I can’t help being a fashion photographer at the end of the day.
Were these all new discoveries to you?
Yes. There’s a certain “taken for granted” attitude in our country about our indigenous people, the Incans, which was our culture before the Spanish came. We see these people dress when we visit the mountains and we think, “oh, how cute” or “how pretty,” but we don’t notice the differences between the variety of costumes — and this is just one out of 23 regions!
What was it like working with people or models so different from those you’re accustomed to?
In fashion photography, the model or person you’re photographing [is often treated] as a mannequin that you’ve imagined to be something in your head; where you only register how they are interpreting the role you’ve given them. The way I like to work, however, is to bring out the persona of the person and make the clothes serve the model, rather than the model serve the clothes, so I work the fashion around the woman. For example, I’d rather photograph Kate Moss, than make Kate Moss become Brigitte Bardot. But in this case it’s different because these images are really about the clothes. The persons wearing them assume an attitude and play a role when they put on these clothes. So in a funny way I’m taking the other route of fashion photography with this project.
Because they’re not famous faces?
Well, in fashion sometimes we are excited by new girls, but they bring nothing more than beauty or a look — there’s no life or personality because they are usually very young, about 16 or 17 years old. It’s not that these people had no personality — on the other hand, they were wonderful characters — but it’s just that I wanted to show more than anything how these dresses are made — they're all woven by hand — because to me the magic is in the amount of information that you can get out of them, and that is used to recognize each other walking in the mountains. They haven’t really let go of this tradition; it’s what they hang on to.
Do you have muses?
Many. Kate Moss is one of my most active muses. Gisele Bundchen is another one. But there are also people like Anna Wintour— people who have influenced my life through their style, their taste, their own lives.
Do you like being exhibited versus being published?
To me they’re all exercises of applying imagery. When you do one picture, there is only one way that you work. When you’re doing 20 pictures you must have variety — of locations, dresses, movements, attitudes. When you do exhibitions it’s no longer about just an image, but an image in space. How do you keep somebody interested in a space? How do you communicate through that space? I quite like it because at the end of the day ‘photography’ means ‘writing with light,’ no? And in everything we do we are trying to write a story, so being exhibited is writing a story through space with light and imagery.
To see highlights of the exhibition, click on the slideshow.
Alta Moda, Queen Sofia Spanish Institute, New York, November 20 to March 29, 2014
