Book Description | The Face Magazine will celebrate The Face’s most iconic portraits from 1980–2004. Explore its role in the evolution of style photography and its international and enduring impact on visual culture.Ground-breaking British youth culture and style magazine The Face established the careers of a generation of photographers, journalists, designers, and models. Known for its distinctive, radical and of-the-minute design and its unflinching attitude, the magazine originally focused on music but branched into fashion and culture more widely, as well as encompassing political and social commentary. Initially running from 1980–2004, its strong inclusive stance, bold design and experimental approaches to photography feel fresh and relevant today. The Face Magazine will celebrate the magazine’s most iconic portraits including Kate Moss, Annie Lennox, Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop, Snoop Dogg, David Bowie, Ewan McGregor, Madness, The Sex Pistols, and Kylie Minogue. It will feature the voices of some of the key contributors to the original magazine and celebrate the ongoing legacy of the magazine’s imagery in British art, design and culture. It will showcase striking and iconic portrait photographs from the likes of Miles Aldridge, Elaine Constantine, Corrine Day, David LaChapelle and Juergen Teller, alongside selected covers and spreads from the original print magazine. |
About the Author | Dr Sabina Jaskot-Gill is Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, where she develops and curates exhibitions and displays of photography and new media. Recent examples include Hold Still (2020), Only Human: Martin Parr (2019), John Stezaker: Portrait (2019), In Focus: Rinko Kawauchi (2018), Black is the New Black: Portraits by Simon Frederick (2018), Siân Davey: We Are Family (2017), Thomas Ruff Portraits (2017) and Double Take: Akram Zaatari and the Arab Image Foundation (2017). She also curated the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2023 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibitions. Ekow Eshun is a British writer, curator, and broadcaster. He was a regular contributor to The Face and went on to become the magazine’s Assistant Editor from 1994 to 1997. Eshun was editor of Arena magazine and later Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing Britain’s foremost public art programme. He is the author of books including The Strangers (2024), In the Black Fantastic (2022), Black Gold of the Sun (2005), shortlisted for the Orwell prize, and editor of The Time is Always Now (2024) and Reframing The Black Figure (2024). Pete Paphides is a music writer, broadcaster and lifelong collector of records and music magazines. Since 1992, his work has appeared in The Times, The Guardian, Mojo, Uncut, Q, Melody Maker, Record Collector and Radio Times. He has written and presented several music documentaries for BBC Radio 4 including The Songs of Molly Drake, which won New York Festival Gold Radio Award for Best Music Special. Published in 2020, his childhood memoir Broken Greek won the RSL Christopher Bland Prize and The Penderyn Prize for Music Book of the Year. He also runs the record label Needle Mythology. Nick Logan is a journalist, editor and publisher, best known for having founded The Face. He was editor of NME from 1973 before founding the pop magazine Smash Hits. Recognising a gap in the market for a monthly magazine focused on music and wider issues, he founded The Face independently in 1979, with the first issue launching in 1980. In parallel, he published and edited several other magazines including men’s magazine Arena, which launched in 1986. Lee Swillingham was Creative Director at The Face from 1992 to 1999. He is the founder, with Stuart Spalding, of the advertising and design agency Suburbia. The pair were Creative Directors for the style magazines Pop in the early 2000s and Love in the 2010s. They have created campaigns for brands including Gucci, Loewe, Salvatore Ferragamo, Miu Miu, Diesel, Rolex, Zara, H&M, MAC Cosmetics and Apple. In 2020 they were appointed Creative Directors-at-Large at British Vogue, and in 2024 they were named Executive Creative Directors at Harper’s Bazaar Italia. Neville Brody was art director of The Face from 1981 to 1986 and Arena from 1987 to 1990. His design agency, Brody Associates, works worldwide with clients such as Coca-Cola, BBC, Sony Music, Channel 4, Christian Dior, Supreme, Mayo Clinic, The Times, Samsung, and Shiseido. Previously president of D&AD, he is Professor of Communication at the Royal College of Art and a Royal Designer for Industry. He has always been focused on education and how it can change to better support creative development and opportunity. In 2023, Brody’s hotly awaited new publication, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3, was launched in partnership with Thames and Hudson. Jill Furmanovsky is a photographer acclaimed for her images of rock musicians, from Pink Floyd to Oasis. Her books include The Moment – 25 Years of Rock Photography (1995) and Oasis: Knebworth (2021). Furmanovsky is the founder of the collective Rockarchive, promoting the work of music photographers and making it accessible to wider audiences. She was a photographer for The Face in the 1980s, and nine of her portraits are held in the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection |