Miles Aldridge (British, b. 1964) is a fashion photographer living and working in London. As the son of art director and illustrator Alan Aldridge, Miles discovered his creativity and passion for photography at a young age. He studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins College in London, graduating in 1987. Starting his career in the 1990s, he soon started working for famous fashion magazines and important labels. His photographs are known for saturated and vibrant colours, an elaborately styled set design and a kind of cinematic narrative. Before shooting, Aldridge plans his photographs out on paper, including everything from the lighting to the colour palette in order to achieve his signature cinematic effect.

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)lives and works in Los Angeles and is known as a multimedia artist. After finishing his studies at the Art Center College of Design he built his reputation on architectural interventions and installations that intervene in public space. Defying definitions of genre, he works in an array of media, including photography, video, sound and sculpture. Aitken aims to reimagine the nature of what art can be and how we experience works of art. With a profound knowledge and understanding of the history of twentieth-century avant-gardes, experimental music and cinema, Aitken’s art embraces a collaborative spirit across disciplines and shines a light on the condition of our media-saturated culture and society.

Gian Paolo Barbieri (Italian, b. 1938) is a fashion photographer from Milan. Always wanting to work in a creative field, Barbieri went to Paris while still young to work as an assistant to Tom Kublin, a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, for a brief but intense period. In 1964 he returned to Milan and opened his own photography studio. In 1965 he joined Vogue Italia, shooting the cover of its first issue. He has worked not only for Italian, French, and American Vogue, but also for prestigious fashion brands such as Armani, Yves Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana. In 1968, Stern magazine named him one of the fourteen best fashion photographers in the world. He still prefers to shoot with analogue cameras which clearly influences his cinematic narrative style.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988) was a painter who lived and worked in New York. He arrived at painting from the graffiti and hip-hop scene in which he had already gained recognition alongside his friend Al Diaz with the graffiti tag ‘SAMO’. In a span of only eight years he created an oeuvre that was both fascinating and complex. Basquiat was very receptive and well-read and alongside autobiographical references he incorporated into his art his vast knowledge of the streets, of historical, sociocultural and art-historical erudition, of literature, music, comics, symbols and visual references from TV and the mass media. During his creative period in the 1980s he became close friends with the famous Pop artist Andy Warhol and the two created over 130 collaborative works together.

Michael Elmgreen (Danish, b. 1961) and Inger Dragset (Norwegian, b. 1969) both live in Berlin and since 1995 work as an artist duo under the name Elmgreen & Dragset. With their work they examine objects in their historical, political, cultural and sociological context, questioning and re-thinking the status quo. In so doing, Elmgreen & Dragset walk the line between art and architecture, installation and performance. Their international breakthrough came with the permanent installation Prada Marfa of 2005, when they installed a fake Prada store in the middle of the Texas desert. The installation The Collectors was their contribution for the adjacent Danish and Nordic Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Since 1997 they have exhibited regularly in leading international museums.

Sylvie Fleury (Swiss, b. 1961) is an artist who lives and works in Geneva. She works in an array of media ranging from photography to video, installation and performance. Her wit and critical view of our time’s consumer mentality have earned her worldwide recognition. Fleury is known for her productions of glamour, fashion and luxury goods, often using readymade objects. Her sleek and alluring works seem at first glance like an affirmation of today’s consumerism, yet on closer inspection they reveal subtle commentaries on contemporary politics of gender, beauty standards and the ever-present culture of consumption.

Hassan Hajjaj (Moroccan, b. 1961)is a photographer, designer and film-maker working and living between London and Marrakech. In 2005 he presented his first solo exhibition, Fashion in Motion, Africa, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which greatly influenced the early period of his career. The self-taught artist is influenced by the London hip-hop, reggae and club scene on one hand, and by his North African heritage on the other. Including colourful patterns, inexpensive materials from Moroccan markets and counterfeit brand logos, his oeuvre reflects his own neo-nomadic lifestyle.

Duane Hanson (American, 1925-1996)was a pioneer of object art and a key representative of American hyperrealism. After his studies in the fine arts at the University of Minnesota, he started teaching art at American and German universities. Only in the 1960s did he begin sculpting his famous life-sized figures. Working primarily with polychromed polyester resin and fibreglass, Hanson painted these human-like and exacting figures with oil paint and then dressed and accessorised them. Hanson thus blurred the line between art and reality, thereby disorientating the viewer as intended. His works depict people in common social situations, focusing especially on American archetypes such as the working class or the marginalised.

Rashid Johnson (American, b. 1977) is a conceptual artist working and living in New York City. He received his first critical attention in 2001, when his works were shown in the Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Johnson works with various media, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, film and monumental installation. His oeuvre draws on autobiographical references and African American symbolism, particularly in terms of the materials he uses, such as black soap, tropical plants, shea butter, tiles and graffiti. He addresses issues of cultural identity and social belonging as well as the emotions associated with them.

Peter Knapp (Swiss, b. 1931)earned his reputation as a photographer, painter and art director in the 1950s after he finished his studies in graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. Peter Knapp took over the artistic direction of the illustrated magazine Nouveau Fémina in 1953 and two years later moved to Galeries Lafayette to work as an art director. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue, The Sunday Times, and Stern. Knapp’s extensive work integrates both the applied and fine arts. Whether in his painting, fashion photography or conceptual art, there is invariably great care placed on the aesthetic of the overall composition. His graphically influenced work evinces a visual language between representation and abstraction.

Nick Knight (British, b. 1958) is known as a photographer, imagemaker and film-maker who lives and works in London. He studied photography at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design. In 1982, whilst still studying, he published his first book of photographs, Skinhead. From the mid-1980s onwards, he contributed regularly to magazines such as i-D, Vogue, Dazed & Confused and Visionaire. His fashion images are highly regarded for challenging conventional ideals and parameters of beauty, aesthetics and of photography itself. In 2000 Knight launched the pioneering fashion website SHOWstudio.com, an interactive platform for the distribution of videos, photographs and illustrations featuring fashion.

Peter Lindbergh (German, 1944-2019)was one of the world’s most celebrated fashion photographers. In the early 1960s he studied at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and worked as a window dresser for a department store. He thereupon started working as an assistant to the German photographer Hans Lux, during which time Lindbergh discovered his interest in fashion photography. Lindbergh moved to Paris in 1978 and started working for Vogue, shooting for the Italian, English, French, German and American editions; in the following years he would ultimately work for most of the important fashion magazines. With his visionary approach and signature matter-of-fact, elegant and emotive aesthetic, typically in black and white, he was able to capture not only a model’s beauty but their personalities as well. He was also one of the first photographers to incorporate storylines into his fashion shoots.

Beatriz Milhazes (Brazilian, b. 1960) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. She is best known for her colourful compositions in which she sets off folkloric aspects of Brazilian culture with European modernism. Her artistic practise and oeuvre are deeply rooted in her native Rio de Janeiro, its urban culture and surroundings, and in particular its botanical gardens. In the mid-1990s Milhazes adopted her idiosyncratic technique of collaging paint by first painting a design onto a transparent sheet of plastic, then sticking it onto the canvas to then peel it off, leaving the layer of paint. She repeats this process numerous times for each work, creating a multilayered yet flat picture in her signature vibrant style, featuring floral as well as abstract elements, geometrical forms and rhythmic patterns.

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) is a photographer who lives and works in Tokyo. Assisting the Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe in the early 1960s, Moriyama started to take black-and-white images on the streets of Tokyo. He captured the social and cultural shifts and urban environment in Tokyo and documented the impact of traditional values within the country’s modern society during post-war Japan. In 1968, together with four other Japanese photographers, Moriyama founded the magazine Provoke which functioned as a platform for a new movement and a new visual language in Japanese photography. The American Pop art master Andy Warhol and the American-born photographer William Klein were early contemporary influences on Moriyama, who would go on to create his own distinctive style and aesthetic.

Helmut Newton (German, 1920-2004)was one of the most important and controversial photographers of the twentieth century. In 1936 he began an apprenticeship with the German photographer Yva in Berlin. Forced to flee Germany two years later, he settled in Australia and opened a photo studio in Melbourne specialising in fashion photography. Returning to Europe in the 1950s together with his wife June Browne, known as Alice Springs, Newton was hired by British Vogue. Moving to Paris, where he would live until the end of the 1970s, he worked for a great number of magazines, developing his unique black-and-white scenes featuring female nudes, his famous ‘femme fatales’. During the 1980s he lived in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles where he continued his work as a fashion photographer. One of Newton’s last projects, started in 2003, was to establish the Helmut-Newton-Stiftung, a foundation housed in the Museum für Fotografie in Berlin, his native city.

Rankin (British, b. 1966)is a portrait and fashion photographer, publisher and film director. He studied at the London College of Communication and in 1991 founded the magazine Dazed & Confused, a highly influential platform for designers, stylists, photographers and authors. As both photographer and director, he has created landmark editorial and advertising campaigns for some of the biggest and most celebrated publications, brands and charities, including L’Oréal, Women’s Aid and Dove, alongside music videos for the likes of Miley Cyrus or Tinie Tempah.

Paolo Roversi (Italian, b. 1947)lives and works as a photographer in Paris. His interest in photography was born during a family holiday in Spain, which led him to spend all his free time teaching himself about his newfound passion. In 1974 he travelled to Paris where he became the assistant to the British photographer Laurence Sackman and thereupon embarked on jobs for Elle, Marie-Claire, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar as well as advertising campaigns for Romeo Gigli, Comme des Garçons and Yoji Yamamoto. Roversi is known for shooting with 8×10 Polaroid film and has stated that he bought as much of it as he could find before it was discontinued. His minimalistic approach to portraiture and beautifully haunting and unguarded shots stand in contrast to the fashion industry’s tendency to reveal and retouch.

Julian Schnabel (American, b. 1951)is a painter, film-maker, and photographer living and working between New York and Montauk, Long Island. Schnabel studied fine arts at the University of Houston from 1969 to 1973 and subsequently attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He found his inspiration for his renowned large-format paintings made with broken ceramic plates during his first trip to Barcelona in the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. In addition to the plate paintings, Schnabel experiments with a vast range of materials and substrates to create his monumental works. In his eclectic and expressive style, he combines literary and pictorial references from the past with abstract signs. Besides working as an artist, Julian Schnabel has also produced and directed films, including Before Night Falls in 2000 and At Eternity’s Gate in 2018.

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954)is a photographer living and working in New York City. Sherman became associated with the so-called Pictures Generation that came of age in the 1970s and responded to the mass media, including advertising, film and magazines, for their art. While enrolled at New York’s Buffalo State College, she began to explore the idea of dressing up as different characters and capturing herself with the camera. The self-portrait series Untitled Film Stills developed in the 1970s is considered instrumental to the development of her subsequent work. Through her photography Sherman analyses gender stereotypes, identity and society’s perception of beauty. More recently, she has turned her focus on physicality and the body by employing dolls and body protheses as a substitute for her own body.

Christopher Thomas (German, b. 1961)is known for his landscape and cityscape photography. Shortly after completing his studies at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie, he began working for several renowned German magazines, including Stern, Geo and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin. His ongoing city portrait series began with Munich Elegies and his been followed by other cities and regions, such as Venice, Paris, New York and the Engadin in Switzerland. The series New York Sleeps, shot between 2001 and 2009 and published by Schirmer/Mosel, won the German Photo Book Prize. For his latest published photographic project, Bittersweet, which he had worked on since the early 2000s, he documented abandoned locations throughout the world which are devoid of human presence.

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to New York City to work as a commercial illustrator. The iconic silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) marked the beginning of his career as a painter and can be seen as a catalyst for his subsequent photographic silkscreen prints and use of serial images. He worked in a variety of art forms, including performance art, film-making, writing and photography. His studio, The Factory, opened in 1964 and became a renowned cultural hotspot. Between 1984 and 1985 Warhol collaborated with the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat on a series of paintings. By emplying mass production methods and taking as subjects commercial products, his works in diverse media revolutionised the reception of fine art and made him one of the key figures of the American Pop art movement.

Emma Summerton (Australian, b. 1970) is a fashion photographer living and working between London and New York City. From 1988 until 1992 she studied photography at the National Art School in Sydney and subsequently assisted several fashion photographers. Settling in London, in 2005 the British magazine Dazed & Confused published her first fashion editorial consisting of a series of self-portrait Polaroids. With her in-depth technical knowledge, she strives to capture natural female beauty and the zeitgeist of today’s fast-moving fashion industry. She has built up an extensive network of commercial clients including Prada, Miu Miu, and Burberry and has shot magazine covers for W Magazine, Vogue China, and Australian Vogue. In the last two years, Summerton has begun working in moving pictures for fashion magazines and commercial brands.