Steven Meisel, the fashion photographer who embellished 'grunge' and opted for androgyny

The rock group's dirty guitars The Smashing Pumpkins They welcome us on the illuminated walkway of the Batería pier, at the Marta Ortega Foundation exhibition center in A Coruña. To access the warehouse rehabilitated by the architecture studio of Elsa Urquijomasterfully integrated into the industrial environment, we have to cross a long continuous screen that transports us to the year 1993, the year in which this unprecedented retrospective takes place, which aims to be a tribute to the life of fashion photographer Steven Meisel.

Meisel (New York, 1954) studied illustration at Parsons School in New York and built her career linked to the Elite modeling agency. Your images built the aesthetic history conventional 90's. beautified the grungeinvented a new masculinity, resized the obsolete concept of glamhe was the precursor of androgyny and minimalism in fashion, he included a political dimension in his scenography and discovered, among others, cute evangelist any Stella Tennant. He, together with Peter Lindbergh, invented those “extinct mythological beings”, as he himself calls them, that species called “supermodels”.

The year 93 coincides with his creative breakthrough. He signed more than 52 covers for fashion italyphotographed the most incendiary Madonna for her book gendersigned the best campaigns for Anna Sui, Dior joão galianoPrada, Ralph Lauren... His love for beauty and fashion made him an obsessive photographer, controlling a process that designs to the millimeter: the lighting, the composition, even the makeup.

Meisel himself created the poses that the models should represent and placed a mirror in front of them during the sessions. The result is beautiful black and white photographs, impeccably mounted, even if the exhibition ends up being a cold catalog of ideal characters.

Unlike the inaugural exhibition in this space, the one dedicated to Lindbergh and in which the photographer who died in 2019 was honored with a room dedicated to a film called Testament (2013) on the death penalty, Steven Meisel 1993 A Year in Photographsas this exhibition is titled, it shows excellent snapshots without a more intimate approach to your personyour opinions, or your work process, focusing only on your photography.

After the great success of the 2021 exhibition, Peter Lindbergh Untold Storieswith more than 110,000 visitors in four months, the Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation (MOP) was born, articulated through photography, fashion and the city of A Coruña, which is accompanied by a beautiful initiative entitled Future stories, a project to support creators which opens with an agreement with the Faculty of Fine Arts of Pontevedra and which awards the ten best TFMs with a scholarship of 4,000 euros and an exhibition that can currently be visited at MARCO in Vigo.

meisel93 covers a historical moment in the fashion industry through more than a hundred portraits, iconic, precise, perfect images, and supposes the desire for continuity of an exciting exhibition and patronage project.

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