Kate, Kylie, Kim … and a topless Iggy: faces of the Face magazine

The Guardian

19-02-2025

From 1980 to 2004, the Face magazine 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. A new exhibition celebrates some of the most iconic Face portraits. The Face Magazine: Culture Shift is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 20 February until 18 May
The Face, which launched in May 1980, quickly became a cult magazine that operated outside of the mainstream but proved exceptionally influential in shaping the tastes of the nation's youth. The cover of the Face quickly became the place to be seen and, with pop stars clamouring to appear in the magazine's pages, editor Nick Logan could afford to be selective. As he recalled: 'No one could get Kim Wilde for an afternoon – but she did it for the Face'
The photographers put out the idea that it was a magazine where you could be taken seriously photographically but also journalistically. Increasingly, its portraits became the images by which music stars were defined
The Face was founded by Nick Logan, who had transformed the fortunes of the New Musical Express in the 1970s before successfully launching the teen music magazine Smash Hits
Neville Brody, the first art director at the Face, later recalled: 'London was this thriving, humming, inspiring, exciting place to be at that time, where anything was possible'
Rather than use run-of-the-mill promotional shots that featured in the music weeklies, or 'inkies', the list of contributors to the first issue reads as a who's who of the decade's most celebrated music photographers. This image was taken by Janette Beckman – you can see more of her work here
This image was used on the cover of the Face in June 1990. Photographers at the magazine were given the space and freedom to create iconic images
Sabina Jaskot-Gill, senior curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, writes: 'The Face has been a trailblazing title since 1980, not just documenting the contemporary cultural landscape, but playing a vital role in inventing and reinventing it. Within its pages, the Face has produced some of the most innovative fashion and portrait photography of its time'
Logan spotted a gap in the market for a monthly title aimed at a youth audience interested in a broad range of subjects that weren't being featured in glossy fashion publications, teen magazines or the music weeklies. In doing so, he invented a new genre: the style magazine
The Face spearheaded the influence of stylists in magazine photography. It was soon proclaiming itself 'the world's best dressed magazine'
Photographers including Norbert Schoerner (a co-curator of this exhibition) and Inez & Vinoodh embraced image-manipulation and the use of computer graphics programmes such as Quantel Paintbox and Photoshop to create a new visual language for fashion photography
Later in the decade, photographers moved away from digital technologies. Elaine Constantine used to photograph her images in-camera, using flash to create intense and vibrant colours that evoked nostalgic memories of carefree teenage rebellion
Stylists including Polly Banks and Isabella Blow were also influential on these changing styles of imagery during the 1990s. Throughout the magazine's history, the Face allowed photographers and stylists a platform to experiment and push fashion and portrait photography in exciting new directions
As photography evolved in the 1990s from analogue to digital formats, the Face was at the forefront of exploring the potential of new image-manipulation programs, which resulted in bold, colourful and 'hyperreal' images. It helped push fashion photography in a new direction – a return to glamour, but with a contemporary twist
The Face ceased publication in 2004, but 15 years later was relaunched in print and online, within a radically altered publishing landscape.
Navigating this new terrain, The Face has continued Logan's original vision for a disruptive, creative and inclusive magazine, championing fresh talent in photography, fashion, music and graphic design. The exhibition closes with work from this new chapter