Master Photographer Series

I have been a huge fan of Mario Testino for years. His unassuming style places the subject first. In the world of celebrity shooters, the ‘over the top’ image can sometimes be the easy way out. Testino uses light and style to capture images that are approachable and fascinating at the same time. Come on in and take a link journey to see some of Mario Testino’s work.

A rare audience with Mario Testino

He’s the world’s most sought-after photographer, the man the A-list calls when it really wants to look its best. But what exactly is it that makes Mario Testino’s portraits so alluring?

Interview by John Walsh
Saturday, 8 March 2008

It’s a Friday night in February and, in Tite Street, Chelsea, a party is in full swing: writers, journalists, academics, poets, TV people, fashionistas, a handful of society beauties. The hostess has encouraged her guests to bring their children, and the party is thronged with effortfully cool young teens. Especially eye-catching is a bevy of six-foot-tall teenage daughters, 15 or 16 at most, who totter about like Russian supermodels. Then a new guest appears. His hair is receding a little, but is a convincing shade of chestnut. His features are blandly handsome. He has a dazzling smile. And as he smiles, a frisson of delight goes through the ladies in the room, for the world’s greatest alchemist of female beauty – the man who makes everyone look beautiful – is in their midst. As though drawn by magnets, one by one, the literary mothers seize their coltish daughters by the hand and make a beeline for him. He extracts a pair of black-framed spectacles from his breast pocket and inspects each blushing ingénue before him, nods and says, “Aaaah…” to acknowledge her loveliness.

Read more at the Independent.

Here is a page that has some good information, but it also has some signature shots that are really incredible. I think you will find his incredible use of natural and augmented light is nearly magical. He directs the shoot with such a flair of the whimsical without crossing over the line to silly or terribly contrived.

Mario Testino:
Now at the top of his profession, Testino has shot Madonna for Versace as well as photographing the late Diana, Princess of Wales for her famous Vanity Fair cover in 1997. His popularity with designers and fashion editors stems as much from his professionalism and good nature as his unerring ability to take beautiful pictures which sell clothes. Testino is also credited with bringing to an end the reign of the ubermodel: rather than pay the exorbitant fees demanded by Linda, Naomi et al, in the early Nineties Testino championed a new breed of model, including Kate Moss (”my favourite”), Stella Tennant and several other new Brit-pack beauties.
Read More here:

This page has information on a personal project that he is working on.

Testino has also announced plans to auction a famous, signed photograph of Princess Diana, which first appeared in Vanity Fair magazine a decade ago. The auction, to be held in London this November, will benefit Save the Children UK.

Testino left Lima just one day before the magnitude-8 earthquake struck the coast of Peru. Speaking out for the first time about the damage caused and the families left homeless in his country, Testino calls for support of Save the Children as the agency assists children and families caught up in the crisis.

“I left Lima the night before the earthquake, and the temperatures were very low,” he said. “The thought of these people living with their sorrow and pain in these desperate conditions is extremely sad.”

From Style.com there is an amazing set of images to show Testino’s ability to present technically perfect images that seem as natural as a snapshot… a really, really good snapshot.

“AngloMania,” the Costume Institute exhibition that opens this month (May 1 through September 4) in the English period rooms of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, places historical costume alongside the recent work of Britain’s most anarchic contemporary fashion designers. Curator Andrew Bolton describes it as a study in “tradition and transgression.” In some ways, it is intended to provide a counterpoint to 2004’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” the blockbuster that saw the exquisite eighteenth-century rooms of the Wrightsman Galleries come vividly to life with a series of frolicking costumed vignettes designed to conjure the risqué French engravings of the period. Once again, theater designer Patrick Kinmonth is creative consultant for a show that promises to be a lively evocation of classic British obsessions—class, sport, royalty, pageantry, pomp, the English country garden, and even the gutter press. Historic English costumes will be juxtaposed with the work of fashion and accessory designers including Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Stephen Jones, Philip Treacy, and Manolo Blahnik. The exhibition is underwritten by Burberry (celebrating its 150th anniversary this year), a company that literally clothed the British Empire with ineffably practical, weather-resistant garments and that is now enjoying a design renaissance under the fashion direction of Yorkshire-born Christopher Bailey.