Arguably the world’s leading fashion
photographer, Mario Testino’s work is everywhere. He is a favourite of the
Condé Nast magazine stable, photographing countless editorial spreads for
British, French, Italian, American and Uomo Vogue as well as Harper’s
Bazaar, Arena, Marie Claire and The Face, to name but a few. Amongst his
highly lucrative and ubiquitous advertising campaigns he has photographed
Madonna for Versace and Kate Moss for Burberry, as well as work for a whole
host of other fashion houses (Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Donna Karan, etc).
His three books to date – Any Objections? (1998), Front Row Back Stage
(1999), and most recently Alive (2001) – explore a range of photographic
genres besides the straight portraiture which the current show presents.
Throughout Testino’s twenty-five- year career he has consistently produced
images that celebrate his own particular brand of seductive international
glamour. It seems fitting that Testino’s first major exhibition in London
should be at the National Portrait Gallery; not just because he ostensibly
photographs people, but because the institution has always been intimately
tied to the changing modes of celebrity. It documents history rather than
necessarily celebrating good artists: indeed, many of its portraits are
unattributed. Testino’s photographs are more concerned with – if not
entirely coerced by – the psychology of contemporary celebrity and the
mechanics of the culture industry, than they are with artistic merit.
As the site of officially sanctioned celebrity, the National Portrait
Gallery, allied with the rise of the illustrated newspaper, first provided a
forum for a debate between significance and appearance. Testino’s work
acknowledges this dialogue’s now over-determined form, yet still raises the
question: why do we desire images of famous people we have never met?
Opened in 1856, London’s National Portrait Gallery was inspired by Prince
Albert’s desire to establish an institution that would humanise modernity.
Bridging a gap between the perceived alienating effect of modern industrial
society and the experience of individual relations, the portrait offered the
possibility of humanising the vague historical names of nation builders.
Central to the founding philosophy of the gallery was a Victorian notion of
‘authenticity’. Portraits, if they were to function properly, should be
based on the direct experience of the sitter by the artist. The viewer, able
to imagine themselves as the artist, could relive the psychological
confrontation. Giving likeness to names, the portraits accepted did not have
to be good artworks – the preserve of the National Gallery – so long as they
were ‘sincere’ historical documents.
Originally conceived as a ‘hall of fame’, the gallery would offer images of
those whose lives had contributed to the nation: the possibility of
connecting a human face to a name, and of discovering history through the
actions of individuals. For contemporary culture, the notion that a
depiction of Liz Hurley, Kate Moss or Madonna can somehow offer us a similar
insight is clearly absurd. The rules of the game have reversed – we now
assign names to the faces which produce history.
In his recent book, Celebrity, Chris Rojek differentiates between ‘ascribed’
celebrity and ‘achieved’ celebrity. The National Portrait Gallery neatly
illustrates this distinction; the collection records the shift from the
dominance of ascribed celebrities – monarchs, lords and ladies – to achieved
celebrities, in the portrayal of financiers, merchants, artists, inventors,
engineers, and so on. But the more significant change that the collection
absorbs, and what Testino reflects, is not how celebrities have replaced the
monarchy as new symbols of identification, but how mass-media has become the
key function in celebrity formation. Where the initial aims of the gallery
were set to depict figures accomplished in their field, they were people
whose image was largely unknown in their lifetime. Indeed, until 1969, the
gallery would only acquire portraits of people who had been dead at least
ten years. Now, the spectacle of fame is invariably tethered to a logic of
commodity where celebrities’ images are managed by intermediaries to ensure
enduring appeal and foster illusions of intimacy. Testino is such an
intermediary par excellence, concocting public representations, ensuring
glamour and brand innovation.
The process of celebrity image-making dramatises an emergent psychological
divide between the private person and the public face, and moreover an
awareness that this artificial public face is always provisional, always
prone to being reformed. Take Elizabeth Hurley, casually lying on a rug in
her knickers with TV remote in hand. Testino shoots her in a domestic
setting, one that appears relaxed and intimate, as if ‘humanising’ the
public face. Testino’s image attempts to reconcile the huge gulf between
star and fan. Courting vulnerability whilst simultaneously acknowledging her
as an object of desire, the photograph might somehow function as a therapy
that engages our sympathy and respect, but also allows us to manage our own
insecurities. Yet Testino’s work seems to defy analysis, while encouraging
appreciation. This is clearly a consequence of the über-glamorous subjects
he chooses to celebrate, yet it is also a product of the peculiar mode of
subjectivism which they embody and Testino’s own personal mythology.
Much of the rhetoric surrounding Testino’s art is routed in the promotion of
a ‘unique chemistry’: a celebrity cannot be explained rationally, but is
something apparently miraculous. The ‘innate talent’ of Gwyneth, Jude, Meg,
Cameron, Kate, Robbie, Gisele et al lies in their unique, matchless looks;
the celebrity of the photographs, it would seem, is a gift of the subjects.
Yet with Testino’s own celebrity this proposition is redoubled in a move of
almost seamless reciprocity: their image is also his gift to them. Although
our current icons of style owe their success to their over-determinable
image – take Madonna’s personification of cultural types, from tramp to
mother via Eva Peron and cowgirl – Testino’s currency lies in his ability to
author their style. I guess he has no illusions that he can picture the
soul. The images are all surface, because the subjects are objects: sex
objects, decorative objects, but mostly symbolic objects. The photographs
show us what form to assume yet suggest that, rather than the celebrity
doctoring their own image, each photograph produces a version of them. Kate
Moss can look a hundred different ways; a Testino portrait of her has
nothing to do with ‘her image’, but everything to do with his image of her
at each shoot. So, we might ask, are they portraits of people at all?
Testino pictures our desires, the photographs offering themselves as
sacramental acts, witnesses to the apparently mysterious and complex
transaction between photographer and sitter. The hypertrophied, paradoxical
play of contemporary celebrity culture encourages an identification with
special characteristics of the famous person on the part of the fan, who
also must acknowledge that in doing so, he or she ultimately distances
themselves further from the subject of their adulation. Orchestrating deep,
often irrational emotions surrounding celebrity fixation, Testino’s images
obscure material reality and social inequality as they revel in a surplus of
desire. The typically vague but passionate convictions of celebrities – a
heady mixture of sincerity and glamour – have a powerful influence for those
seeking role models. The photographs’ staged illusions of personal contact
with successful people act as instant distractions from the hum-drum of
everyday life. Yet we either embrace them wholeheartedly as desirable, or
reject them completely as unattainable.
Testino’s inexorable participation in the relational field of celebrity can
be found most profoundly in his iconic images of Princess Diana. Shot for
Vanity Fair in 1997, seven months after her divorce and five months before
her death, Diana is variously depicted laughing and smirking, appearing
completely comfortable and relaxed. She looks like an ‘ordinary’ celebrity:
in giving her the intimate yet glamorous air that affects many of his
‘society’ portraits, Testino unwittingly mashes up the boundaries between
‘ascribed’ and ‘achieved’ celebrity. It is ironic that, whilst establishing
herself as an independent woman with her own agenda, symbolically adrift
from the strictures of the court, the image of the Princess must recourse to
the rule of celebrity as commodity. Furthermore, once internalised into
popular culture this new public face possesses an immortal quality, allowing
her celebrity to be recycled even after death.
So what befell the National Portrait Gallery’s philosophy of ‘authentic’
portraiture? Riddled with problems of proof, the absurdity of the
acquisition policy soon undid itself, perhaps sparked by another set of
images of royalty. By 1865, three portraits of Elizabeth I had been
acquired, all apparently painted in the monarch’s presence during her reign.
All three are uniquely different, yet with seemingly equal claim to
authenticity. With the multiplication of portraits of this regal sitter,
defining the nature of ‘true’ identity became forever mired in difficulty.
Mario Testino: Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London,
1 February – 4 June 2002.
Chris Rojek’s Celebrity is published by Reaktion Books, London, 2001.
Max Andrews is a former Associate Editor of Contemporary Visual Arts and is currently studying for an MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London