On the occasion of Milano Women’s Fashion Week, 10 Corso Como unveiled the first-ever solo exhibition dedicated to Glen Luchford, British photographer and portraitist who, from the 1990s to the present day, has revolutionized and redefined the visual language and aesthetic standards of the fashion industry.
Curated by Alessio de’ Navasques, Glen Luchford. Atlas brings together over thirty years of work in a single continuous flow. Iconic editorials, fashion campaigns, portraits, personal memories, outtakes, and re-edits. An atlas, almost an autobiography through images: a site-specific project, designed by the artist himself specifically for the 10 Corso Como Gallery, like a cinematic flow of spontaneous associations and intrinsic correspondences. The exhibition marks a new chapter in 10 Corso Como cultural programme, in its exploration of contemporary art, its protagonists and iconography in the fields of photography, design, visual and applied arts.
Composed of large-format prints, layered works, and collages, the exhibition gives visitors the feeling of browsing through a personal archive, transcending chronological and cataloguing conventions. The images are bare, simply stuck to the walls like frames in the montage of a movie. Cinematic inspiration and dynamic tension, which translates into actual or evoked movement, permeate the work of the artist, who has stated: “I’ve always be drawn to two main themes in my career, Italian Futurism and the idea of movement, which are both closely linked. Futurism to me was the Punk Rock of the 1920s with its glorification of modernity. But I think you can really trace it back to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which reshaped human thinking - that space and time are relative, not absolute. That must have been fascinating to witness such a groundbreaking shift in our understanding. But what’s that got to do with fashion photography? And more importantly, me. It’s simply that one triggered the other, starting a sequence that led to all the key groundbreaking moments in 20th-century culture. And specifically, to me the explosion of Punk in the 1970s when I attended middle school. I was too young to participate, but I viewed it with great fascination from the sidelines. We didn’t realize at the time, but it was a unique moment that seems to live on in my unconscious”.
Fashion, skateboarding, and English post-punk shaped his youthful sensibilities. In the 1990s, when British photography embodied the creative avant-garde, Luchford reinvented the concept of beauty, dismantling stereotypes and introducing a new aesthetic, conveyed by independent magazines, as the ground for personal and identity-driven expression. A unique season, documented in the exhibition through intimate frames, encounters, and exchanges within a vibrant creative community.
Against the backdrop of a restless black-and-white New York, a very young Kate Moss poses for a photo shoot for Harper’s Bazaar; Amber Valletta is lying on a boat on the Tiber at sunset, or standing in a snowcovered labyrinth reconstructed by Cinecittà set designers, or photographed while peeking through a door’s peephole: these are the campaigns shot for Prada between 1996 and 1998, memorable images dense with references to filmmakers such as Kubrick, Tarkovsky, and Lynch. Rarefied settings on the border between reality and fiction reappear in the Polaroids with Stella Tennant or Malgosia Bela, consolidating a representation of femininity that is ethereal yet intensely sensual. No shots are missing from more recent collaborations, such as those created for magazines such as Vogue, Self Service, Arena Magazine, Another, Purple, V Magazine, and Interview, or those born from the collaboration with Alessandro Michele for Gucci, characterized by the creation of extraordinary sets: from Hollywood musicals to re- staged student protests of 1968, and 1950s cinema populated by aliens and lagoon monsters. Alongside fashion photography, there are portraits: from the chiaroscuro portrait of Bjork for The Face to those of artists and actors who inspired him, such as Willem Dafoe, Tim Roth, and John Lurie, or his collaboration with British artist Jenny Saville in his early years, culminating in the Closed Contact, a series where the artist’s face and body appear pressed against the camera lens.
The exhibition closes with a video installation, never-before-seen, featuring fashion films imbued with an irony that mocks convention.
Glen Luchford. Atlas
Curated by Alessio de’ Navasques
September 25 – November 23, 2025
10 Corso Como Gallery - Milan
