ROUND THE WORLD
50 - THE FACE, LONDON - 24 April 2025
During our hectic short stay in London I visited the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) to see the exhibition ‘The Face Magazine: Culture Shift.’ Don’t miss it. It’s fabulous.
‘Heaven’, the club we started, opened its doors in December 1979. ‘The Face’ magazine was launched by Nick Logan in May 1980. We never fully inhabited the world of people who populated the pages of the magazine although many of those who did partied, strutted, experimented with and advanced their varied creative iterations at ‘Heaven’.
At the exhibition, visited by people young and old, I saw many people of my own age, people dressed quite conservatively and therefore seemingly so. I watched them there, like me, loving the show. It amused me to speculate that most probably a number of those elderly, sober looking folk might also have been, in their youth, the very same people whose outrageous images now hung in front of us at the show?
From the NPG introduction to the exhibition:
‘ ‘The Face Magazine: Culture Shift’ celebrates iconic fashion images and portraits from ‘The Face’, a trail-blazing youth culture and style magazine that shaped the creative and cultural landscape in Britain and beyond.’
‘From 1980 to 2004, ‘The Face’ played a vital role in creating contemporary culture. Musicians featured on its covers achieved global success and the models it championed – including a young Kate Moss – became the most recognisable faces of their time. The magazine also launched the careers of many leading photographers and fashion stylists who were given the creative freedom to radically reimagine the visual language of fashion photography and define the spirit of their times.’
‘Relaunched in 2019, the magazine continues to provide a disruptive and creative space for image-makers, championing fresh talent in photography, fashion, music and graphic design.’
‘This exhibition brings together the work of over 80 photographers, including Sheila Rock, Stéphane Sednaoui, Corinne Day, David Sims, Elaine Constantine, Sølve Sundsbø and features over 200 photographs – a unique opportunity to see many of these images away from the magazine page for the first time.’
From Jeanette Beckman, photographer:
‘ ‘The Face’ was not just a ‘fashion’ magazine or a ‘music’ magazine, It was about what was happening on the streets and the intersection between music and fashion. Now we all know that this is where culture begins. The Face was the first to feature this and captured this at a special time in the UK.’
From Richard Benson. Editor ‘The Face’ during the 1990’s:
‘The premise which made - and still makes - ‘The Face’ unique was that youth and pop culture should be treated with the sort of reverence and critical intelligence that prior to May 1980 was almost exclusively associated with the highbrow.’
Also from Richard Benson:
‘You’re not going out dressed like that…. The clubs of the eighties, nineties and noughties were where to be and be seen. ‘The Face’ was always one step ahead in recognising the places in which to dress up, dance and make memories. From month to month and then from year to year, ‘The Face’ not only documented what was happening underground, but also asked if sometimes those clubs might not have bigger meanings that went beyond just drinking and dancing. The writers and editors shared two unspoken beliefs. First, that clubs are places in which the young and creative try on new ways of expressing and enjoying themselves that feel right for the times and second, that clubs can be the best places in which to hunt out the new music and ideas that may eventually infiltrate everyone’s everyday lives.’
© Intro Text Derek Frost 2025