A comprehensive exhibition celebrating the iconic work of fashion photographer Glen Luchford has opened at 10 Corso Como in Milan, featuring a rich collection of editorial shoots, fashion campaigns, portraits, personal photographs, and previously unseen outtakes from the 1990s to the present day. The exhibition, titled "Glen Luchford: Atlas," presents both a visual biography of one of fashion's most influential photographers and chronicles the evolving nature of fashion imagery over the past three decades.
Curator Alessio de Navasques, who oversees the cultural program at the iconic Milanese concept store founded by Carla Sozzani in 1990 and now led by Tiziana Fausti, explained his vision for the exhibition series. "My aim is to do a series of exhibitions focusing on the 90s, or figures that were relevant in that time, because it is the founding moment of 10 Corso Como," he said. Previous exhibitions in this series included "Archive Circle," a collaboration with Morphine.Online that evoked 90s aesthetics, and "Yohji Yamamoto – Letter to the Future," which displayed iconic runway pieces alongside past and future collections from the Japanese designer.
The site-specific installation, designed by Luchford himself, features large format prints alongside three massive walls layered with over 100 images from the photographer's extensive archive. "It's very interesting to reactivate an archive from a contemporary perspective, whether this is a designer or a photographer," de Navasques noted. The exhibition format was specifically designed to create movement and dynamism, with overlapping images arranged in a collage style that reflects the energy of Luchford's work.
Luchford's journey into photography began in 1986 when he was living in Brighton and his father bought him a camera for his 18th birthday. In an extensive 1998 interview now preserved in the British Library Sound Archive, Luchford recalled: "It was sort of his narcissistic desire in a way because he really liked photography. He liked the idea of me liking photography. It was a bit like snooker. He was like, I like snooker, you should like snooker. So of course, I hated it. But funnily enough, with photography it seemed there was a natural link." He began by photographing friends skateboarding, discovering that "with a camera, you were suddenly invited to the top of ramp because people always wanted their vanity played to."
By 1990, Luchford had become part of London's burgeoning independent fashion scene, centered around influential magazines like Dazed, i-D, and The Face. The Face gave him his first major commission to photograph The Stone Roses, and one of the earliest images in the Atlas exhibition is a portrait of lead singer Ian Brown, shot on a large format 10x8 camera. This image exemplifies Luchford's dedication to a highly technical, studio-based approach that distinguished him from the more snapshot-informed aesthetics of his contemporaries and would later become the foundation for his advertising campaign work.
The first photograph displayed on the Atlas collage wall is instantly recognizable: a 1994 portrait of Kate Moss directing a punch toward the camera against a backdrop of midtown Manhattan. Influenced by the graphic, black and white New York street photography of William Klein, the image possesses a palpable dynamism that informed the exhibition's display format. "The starting point for the show was to create movement with the images, having this collage of overlapping images – to put movement into the space," de Navasques explained.
According to de Navasques, Luchford created two revolutionary moments in the fashion industry. The first came through his collaboration with Prada in the mid-1990s, and the second occurred with Alessandro Michele at Gucci in 2015. Over just two years from 1996 to 1998, Luchford worked with Miuccia Prada on a series of campaigns that are now considered era-defining. These images, featuring models and actors like Amber Valletta, Willem Dafoe, and Joaquin Phoenix, appeared like stills from an unidentified film, offering an ambitious proposition for the possibilities of fashion campaigns.
Acknowledging the influence of directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, Luchford utilized cinematic strategies to create images rich with friction and drama, where fashion played an equal role alongside lighting and set design. These Prada images were destined to exist as a relatively small edit of still photographs, mythologized in part by their ambiguity and scarcity. Fashion enthusiasts would hunt for the images in vintage print media, and archive Instagram accounts would later circulate them to new audiences. The images even transcended their original commercial purpose, featuring in the exhibition "Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2004.
The two distinct periods represented in Luchford's archive offer an opportunity to reflect on the dramatic shift in fashion imagery over these decades. While the Prada work existed primarily as still photographs, Luchford's more recent Gucci collaborations demonstrate his understanding that contemporary fashion imagery must exist as both still and moving images across multiple aspect ratios suited to our current screen culture. The aesthetics and spectacle of B-movie science fiction and the golden age of Hollywood musicals provide rich material in the ongoing battle for consumer attention.
Exhibitions explicitly dedicated to fashion photography remain relatively rare, and solo shows for individual fashion photographers are even more uncommon. However, "Atlas" exemplifies how the right work and venue can unite to tell a compelling story of our times. "The exhibition space at 10 Corso Como is very particular," de Navasques observed. "For Milanese people it is like an institution. It's a place where we all go during the weekend, with kids, to see the exhibition. So, from my perspective, every exhibition must have a didactic purpose."
"Glen Luchford: Atlas" will remain on display at 10 Corso Como in Milan through November 23, 2025, offering visitors a comprehensive look at one of fashion photography's most influential voices and the evolution of fashion imagery from the 1990s to the present day.
