Mario Testino

Biography

Photographer Mario Testino was born in Lima, Peru, into a family of Irish, Spanish, and Italian origin. He attended the American School of Lima and went on to study economics at the Universidad del Pacifico in Lima, law at the Universidad Catolica in Lima, and international relations at the University of San Diego in San Diego, California. From Peru he moved to London and began his formal training in photography.

Testino continues to live in London, but he travels extensively, shooting his sophisticated, provocative photos for magazines such as Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, and Vanity Fair. He has photographed many celebrities and has contributed to the images of many leading fashion houses.

Testino's work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Japan, Italy, Brazil, the United States, Great Britain, and Belgium. A major retrospective of his portraiture was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2002. Book projects include Any Objections? (Phaidon, 1998), Front Row/Backstage (Bulfinch, 1999), and Alive (Bulfinch, 2001). Testino's photographs are held in the collections of The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, among others.