Mark Borthwick
On the cover of Fantastic Man - Issue N°40

Claire Marie Healy spends two fun days in conversation with the mythical photographer and poet Mark Borthwick, who gently flipped the world of fashion imagery on its head. Here, he speaks openly and shares generously in ways rarely seen in print. Selected quotes from the article below.

His photographs have travelled: editorials he shot throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s for then fledgling magazines like Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm’s ‘Purple’, ‘Self Service’ and ‘AnOther’, as well as ‘i-D’ (primarily working with Jane How, with whom he is still close) and ‘Vogue Italia’ under the late Franca Sozzani live online everywhere from The Fashion Spot to Instagram saved folders.

He picks memories up and handles them, laying them out in a row like a rail of beautiful clothes in a studio shoot that will produce pictures for a magazine much like this one.

This year, the photographer has good reason to speak. A forthcoming exhibition at the new larger space of Fondazione Sozzani, the Milanese cultural centre founded by Carla Sozzani, will display more of his archive than ever before. And a book, ‘Out of Date’, forthcoming in September, will see many of his earliest works published for the first time.

Mark was photographed by his daughter, Bibi. She followed Mark into the family business of image creation.

Photograph for Bless, by Mark in 2000.