Amsterdam

In 1999, a small exhibition of Mario Testino’s photographs, taken over several days in Amsterdam, went on show at Timothy Taylor Gallery in London. Amsterdam is as much of a symbol for Testino, as a place. It spells freedom – the freedom to be, to love, to live as a complete individual.

Assembling a cast from the streets of the city, Testino’s tableaux vivants, brightly coloured and swarming with life, lead visitors on a journey through a modern garden of earthly delights. Complete with surreal presences, grotesques, beauties, sexual disorientations, unconscious quotations of Bosch and Breughel untouched by the easy surrealism of computer manipulation, the 13 photographs that were shown in "Amsterdam" have a bold sense of design and pattern. Everything is in its ordained place. Order has prevailed over life’s confusions. The photographs shown, celebrate the valuable freedoms of arts and life in an Amsterdam of the mind.

Mario Testino, "Amsterdam", Timothy Taylor Gallery, London 1999.