The Seduction Of Fashion

The Department of Education and Culture announces that on June 6, 2014 at 6.00 pm, a photographic exhibition dedicated to Gian Paolo Barbieri, one of the most internationally known and influential Italian fashion photographer, will be inaugurated at the Saint-Bénin Center in Aosta.

The exhibition retraces the career of the photographer through 58 large format photographs that tell the story of fashion from the 1960s to the early 2000s: from Valentino, Armani, Ferré and Versace advertising campaigns to the covers of “Vogue” , in a dense path of suggestions that, describing the evolution of its style, at the same time offers a breakthrough on the recent history of fashion photography.

Daria Jorioz, art historian and regional manager of the Exhibit Activity Structure and by Raffaella Ferrari, curates the exhibition of Gian Paolo Barbieri “The Seduction of Fashion”.

Gian Paolo Barbieri has portrayed in his studio the fashion and entertainment icons: from the magnificent Audrey Hepburn of 1969, to the top model Veruschka, to Vivienne Westwood, to famous movie and art celebrities such as Monica Bellucci, Anjelica Huston, Sophia Loren, Rudolph Nureyev, Jerry Hall, Gilbert & George.

Barbieri, born in Milan in 1935, helped create the fashion image, working closely with the most famous fashion designers and fashion editors. His glamorous shots have inspired many other fashion photographers: in his pictures he finds a rigorous search for formal perfection together with the narrative of the “other” world, that of beauty and dream. Young, Barbieri moved to Rome, where he dedicated himself to cinema as an apprentice in Cinecittà. In 1961 Tom Kublin recruited him as an assistant on the sets of French fashion collections. Cinecittà’s experience has a lot to do with his photography: there are several film-inspired images in the show, in which the set, in studio, is not only staged, but tell a story as from a frame of a movie. In 1965 he began his collaboration with “Vogue”, creating the cover of the first issue of Vogue Italia.

And it is thanks to the photographic services for the Italian, French, American and German editions of “Vogue” that the great fashion designers entrust him with their advertising campaigns.

In 1978 “Stern” includes Barbieri among the fourteen authors who made the history of fashion photography. His photographs are exhibited in prestigious venues around the world, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the National Portrait Gallery in London and at the Kunstforum in Vienna.

The exhibition is accompanied by an Italian-French bilingual catalog, edited by Allemandi.