INTERVIEW David K Shields
There are photographers who define a moment, and there are photographers who define an era. Mario Testino is the latter. For three decades, his lens shaped the visual language of fashion and portraiture at its most exalted level – from the campaigns that made luxury synonymous with a certain kind of light, to the iconic portraits of Princess Diana that the world would carry long after she was gone. His was an eye that made glamour feel intimate, and intimacy feel like something you’d been searching for without knowing it.
What came next is extraordinary – and our conversation with him explores an entirely different approach: the rare ability to catch the truth in a person, in a people, and bring it forward through his lens for the world to know.
Now, rather than directing the world’s most famous faces under studio lights, Testino finds himself driving twelve hours through Myanmar to spend half a day with a community few outsiders will ever meet. Rather than orchestrating – models, stylists, the precise choreography of a fashion shoot – he is documenting. Arriving, watching, and letting what he finds speak for itself.
“In fashion I had to determine all that went into the picture. In A Beautiful World, I tend to reveal what maybe not everyone gets to see – documenting what I find interesting without changing it.”
A Beautiful World is the name of Testino’s current life’s work: an ongoing global project to photograph the traditional dress of as many nations and communities as he can reach, capturing each on their own terms, in the clothes that define their belonging. Since its roots in Alta Moda – a decade-long survey of traditional Peruvian dress that began in 2007 – the project has grown to encompass 36 countries and counting. Mongolia, Myanmar, Japan, Senegal, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Namibia.
What moves him most, he says, are the unexpected resonances: traditional garments from the heart of Asia that echo the dress of South America or Africa, the continuity of pattern across continents and centuries. He travels with a team of six – producer, stylist, filmmaker, photography technician, general manager – and arrives having done thorough cultural research. He doesn’t change anything. He uses light and composition to honour what he finds. He shows up, and he pays attention.
In his conversation with It’s Interval, Testino reflects with characteristic openness on the shift from fashion to fine art, on what beauty means when you’ve seen it expressed in a thousand different ways across the world, on legacy (which he claims not to think about much), and on the one quality that has never left him across five decades of extraordinary work – curiosity.
“Day by day, I realise how small we are compared to the whole world. Traditions last far longer than any individual. We come and go, but they continue.”
This is our cover story for Issue 5: Vanguard. We are honoured to share it with you.
Featured in It’s Interval VANGUARD – view full story and more from this issue!