GLEN LUCHFORD EXHIBITION
ATLAS — CINEMA, TIME AND THE REINVENTION
OF THE FASHION IMAGE
An intimate atlas where fashion becomes narrative and time stands still, at 10
Corso Como, Milan
Presented at the 10 Corso Como Gallery and curated by Alessio de’ Navasques, the exhibition Glen Luchford. Atlas brings together more than thirty years of work by one of the most visionary photographers of his generation.
From his paradigmatic campaigns for Prada in the 1990s to his recent collaborations with Gucci under the direction of Alessandro Michele, the project reveals itself as a continuous narrative in an intimate, almost autobiographical atlas, in which each image performs a fragment of life.
The exhibition presents itself as a journey through the mind of an artist who transformed fashion photography into cinematic language. The works, presented in large formats, with overlays and collages, seem to be assembled like an unfinished film: without chronological order, only the spontaneous flow of memory and visual immersion, inviting the viewer to find their own line of reasoning and connection, as well as to browse through Luchford’s personal archive as if crossing a dream, between memory, fiction, and captured moments.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF A CINEMATOGRAPHIC LANGUAGE
Shaped by the contradictory energy of English postpunk and influenced by urban culture, cinema, and documentary photography, Glen Luchford developed a sensibility that continues to challenge the dominant paradigm of advertising glamour. In the 1990s, when British photography symbolized the creative avant-garde, he subverted the ideal of beauty by introducing the unexpected, error, and emotion as aesthetic elements. Each image is a scene: a fusion between art and narrative, between the real and the rehearsed.
In his own words, Luchford acknowledges the impact of Italian Futurism and Einstein’s theory of relativity on his vision of the image:“Futurism was, for me, the punk rock of the 20s, with its glorification of modernity. It taught me that time and space are relative and that photography is where these two concepts meet.” This philosophical conception of time as living matter runs
through all of his work: the images seem to exist between two beats, what has just happened and what is about to be revealed.
ICONS, FILMS, AND MEMORIES
At the heart of the exhibition are the images that redefined the iconography of contemporary fashion: Kate Moss, still unknown, in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar; Amber Valletta, lying on a boat on the Tiber or lost in a snowy labyrinth created by Cinecittà; Stella Tennant and Malgosia Bela, immersed in dreamlike atmospheres of rare beauty.
These photographs, taken for Prada between 1996 and 1998, became symbols of a new aesthetic sensibility, dense with cinematic references to Kubrick, Tarkovsky, and David Lynch. Alongside them, portraits of Björk, Willem Dafoe, Tim Roth, and Jenny Saville expand his universe beyond fashion, revealing a gaze that captures the vulnerability of human beings amid the artifice of the scene. The collection forms a personal mythology, in which each photograph is simultaneously a document and a fiction, a memory and an invention.
In his most recent works, created for magazines such as Vogue, Self Service, Another, and Purple, Luchford continues to explore the tension between the intimate and the spectacular, between chance and staging. The exhibition culminates in a new video installation, composed of fashion films that mix irony, lyricism, and self-analysis, petite visual confessions that deconstruct the conventions of the genre.
LUCHEFORD AND THE SPIRIT
OF THE TIME
At the heart of Atlas lies a reflection on the very zeitgeist of the contemporary image, as you can imagine. At our historic moment when fashion faces visual saturation, the accelerated obsolescence of trends, and a sense of high urgency followed by collective inertia, Luchford’s work represents a silent resistance. His gaze, therefore, rejects algorithmic uniformity and digital haste, favoring the slow pace of creation, chance, and gesture.
As Alessio de’ Navasques observes, “Luchford lives in the present while maintaining a poetic distance; he observes the fractures of postmodernity without ever losing the coherence of his vision.” This stance resonates as a counterpoint to the immediacy of mass culture: his long exposures, cinematic compositions, and studied lighting remind us that photography can be a form of thought, not just consumption. In times of disposable images, Luchford proposes an ethic of the gaze: the persistence of beauty as an act of resistance.
AN ATLAS OF HIMSELF
Atlas is, in essence, a disguised self-portrait. An emotional mosaic that brings together three decades of experimentation, memory, and technical rigor. Each photograph, Polaroid, or fragment reveals an artist in constant dialogue with himself and the world around him. The result is a narrative that does not seek perfection, but the truth of the moment, that which escapes control and brings the image to life.
The exhibition also marks a new chapter in the cultural programming of 10 Corso Como, reinforcing its vocation to crossfashion, art, and contemporary thought. As a visual manifesto, Atlas reminds us that photography, and by extension, fashion, remain relevant only when they dare to be personal, vulnerable, and profound.
BEYOND THE EXHIBITION
More than a retrospective record, Atlas is a manifesto on time and memory in the age of visual excess. Luchford reaffirms that beauty is not in the new, but in the continuous, in the ability to revisit, recompose, and reinterpret.
His work reminds us that authentic aesthetics is a process of refinement, not consumption.
Like in an endless film, his images remain suspended between the past and the future, challenging us to look again, calmly, at what the world tries to make disappear.
“Glen Luchford. Atlas” is on view at the 10 Corso Como Gallery in Milan from September 25 to December 3, 2025.
Review by Brenda Barreiros