Press Release
Steven Meisel: Iconic
7 October 2023 – 3 February, 2024
Born in New York in 1954, Steven Meisel was fascinated with beauty and models from an early age.
Being only twelve years old, he asked older friends to call model agencies pretending they were Richard Avedon’s assistants in order to get hold of photographs in the models’ portfolios. Meisel even made a habit of skipping school to seek out chance encounters with models on the street, photographing them with his Instamatic.
He attended the High School of Art and Design in New York City before enrolling in Parsons, The New School of Design where he majored in fashion illustration. After graduating, Meisel worked as an illustrator for Halston.
Meisel’s career in photography began in the late 1970s when he was working at Women’s Wear Daily as an illustrator. An Elite agent asked him to take pictures of his models and the rest is history!
Known for his visionary, striking and provocative visuals, Steven is unique as he not only depicts fashion, he defines it and gives it cultural resonance, revitalizing its history and anticipating its future.
With the late Franca Sozzani at the helm of Vogue Italia, Meisel created every cover and lead editorial for more than 20 years, at times arousing controversy by addressing social questions, racism, addiction, cultural narcissism, and often satirizing fashion’s own mannerisms and exhibitionism.
Along with his ability to cast the faces and characters that come to represent the look of today, molding and shaping his models into an endless array of narratives, Meisel has a prodigious talent for scripting story lines that reflect culture.
Meisel popularized a number of influential supermodels transforming them into household names. His frequent subjects have included Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Stella Tennant, Amber Valletta, Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen, Karen Elson, Natalia Vodianova, Carla Bruni and Kristen McMenamy.
He has created some of fashion's most memorable campaigns for Prada, Miu Miu, Loewe, Moschino, Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, Lanvin, Versace, Balenciaga, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and Dolce & Gabbana.
Meisel has also portrayed our leading actresses and entertainers, defining the relationships between celebrity and fashion in the process.
Notably, Meisel collaborated with Madonna to create their book “Sex” in which Madonna acted out a lexicon of photography’s sexual tableaux captured in images by Meisel.
In a career spanning more than forty years Meisel continues to define the creative potential of fashion photography today.
Steven Meisel and Linda Evangelista have released a new book with publishing house Phaidon this September. It serves as the legendary photographer’s first retrospective monograph and the supermodel’s first book ever.
Steven Meisel’s work has been exhibited in a few rare occasions in museums and galleries.
An amazing exhibition “Steven Meisel 1993 A Year in Photographs” was organized by MOP Foundation, a personal project of Marta Ortega Pérez presented in A Coruña from November 2022 to May 2023.
Alta’s upcoming exhibition presents a very special and rare opportunity to see and purchase some of the most iconic photographs by Steven Meisel.
