THE FACE, Culture Shift, NPG

​​Once every few years, a blockbuster photography exhibition comes to London. Two game changers for me were Guy Bourdin at the V & A in  2003 and Face of Fashion / Mert and Marcus at the NPG in 2016. 

The Face at the NPG exhibition is flooded with iconic photos – the magazine allowed a whole new gang of photographers to take on the Penn's, Newton's and Avedon's.

There’s something maverick about editorial photography, the studio is more controlled but on location any situation can become a great shot. A perfect example is my friend Nicky Mawhood, shot by David Sims in 1997. She said it was early, cold and in a field in Bedfordshire. The picture is raw, striking and geometric. This exhibtion will remind you of a certain song, film , or fashion you wore, while witnessing a retrospective of some of our greatest names in fashion and portrait photography, at a time when they were just starting. The Face was on the pulse with it's content creators, as well as their stories.

The exhibition opens with all the magazine covers spanning 25 years, and flows chronologically into the eighties, 90s and 2000s. It's wall to wall, boundary pushing creativity, showing pioneering diversity not just with the range of photographers who contributed to this trail blazing magazine, but also with the models and subjects they chose.  Andy Bettles' 'Spellbound' and  Jean Paul Goude's image of Grace Jones were a couple of highlights.

There’s a room dedicated to Jamie Morgan / Ray Petri, a photographer / stylist combo who created some awesome, arresting shots including ‘The Harder They Come’, an unbelievable photograph, which opens the whole exhibition.

The final gallery is filled with master shot after master shot, by Anton Corbijn, David Lachapelle, Jurgen Teller, Nick Knight, Ellen Von Unwerth, Corinne Day, Albert Watson, the list is endless with my friend Nikki’s picture on the back wall. The Corbijn's and Teller's are unreal.

Go by yourself, meet a date, take your family, everyone features here and so should you.​​

On until May 18th, NPG.

© David Sims, Jean Baptiste Mondino

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