Face of Fashion: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Corinne Day, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi, Mario Sorrenti

Any fashion photographer can make a flattering portrait, but the contemporary masters featured in ‘Face of Fashion don’t even try. This striking volume presents the intensely unconventional, often unnervingly intimate portraiture being made by some of today’s most creative and original fashion photographers. Each photographer is represented by a range of portraits, including several commissioned especially for this book. Some of these portraits were produced as ads, others were commissioned for editorial features. Many of the subjects are celebrities such as Kate Moss by Corinne Day, Madonna by Steven Klein and by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Sting by Paolo Roversi; others are as anonymous as Mario Sorrenti’s Woman I . Essays by Susan Bright and Vince Aletti illuminate the collaborative nature of this radically new approach to portraiture, as well as how it diverges from earlier work by Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and others. In addition, interviews and candid descriptions of the process by the photographers and subjects themselves provide rare insight into the potent mix of fame, fashion, and photography seen here.