Mario Testino won’t take my picture

Last weekend we viewed the Mario Testino: In your Face exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) here in Boston. For the uninitiated, Mario Testino is a famous fashion photographer whose work has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Popular Science (just kidding) and who has never taken my picture because I am not beautiful and I am not a celebrity (not kidding). On the surface, the exhibit is about glamorous fashion photos. But upon closer inspection, it became apparent the exhibit was really about the concept of celebrity itself. Both the celebrity of Mario Testino and the celebrity of the famous people he photographs. The show was not about a photographer who takes pictures of beautiful people. It was about a celebrity who takes pictures of celebrities!

The exhibit started off with a bank of television monitors showing clips of Testino being interviewed, walking on red carpets, and appearing on television shows all around the world. This put the viewer on notice that Testino is a glamorous person and celebrity in his own right. And the viewer is not.

Next came several galleries of great looking, flashy pictures of beautiful people. Because I neither attend the Cannes Film Festival, nor read People magazine, I was oblivious most of the time as to which celebrity I was viewing. And, not knowing who the subjects were did not necessarily raise the photographs above stylish advertising. I can’t say many of these photos took on any more importance once I realized, or was told, whose portrait I was viewing.

For instance, a pretty photograph of Jennifer Aniston made me wonder if anyone would care if they were unfamiliar with Jennifer Aniston. It also seemed that a bar of soap or bottle of perfume could be inserted in the photo and it would make a nice advertisement. Most of the exhibit was like this, fun but light-weight.

A photo that did stand out was of Tom Brady. Besides being the husband of super-model Giselle Bundchen, Tom Brady is more widely known, and idolized, in these parts as the three Super Bowl winning quarterback of the New England Patriots. Was Brady’s  photo included because he’s a star fashion model now, or married to a super model, or simply because he’s a local sports hero?

One thing for sure, the New England Patriots haven’t won a Super Bowl since their leader began to morph into a fashion celebrity.

Copyright 2012 Magnus Incognito

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