CODES OF HONOUR: THE BEAUTY OF DISCIPLINE

“There’s something deeply moving in how people carry their history. You see it in the way they stand, the way they wear their uniform, the way they serve.” – Mario Testino

For decades, Mario Testino has turned his lens toward the codes that define culture, fashion, identity, and desire. With Codes of Honour, he steps into a new realm of portraiture, one that studies how tradition and devotion manifest through ritual, posture, and dress.

Here, uniforms become language. From Europe to Asia to Latin America, these portraits document men who have inherited centuries of ceremony: soldiers, guards, and ceremonial regiments who represent their nations not through words but through presence.

Testino approaches them not as subjects of authority but as symbols of continuity. His portraits reveal how elegance and duty can coexist, how the body becomes a vessel for history. There is tenderness in their discipline, intimacy in their symmetry.

This series expands Testino’s lifelong fascination with how identity is expressed through what we wear. In Codes of Honour, the uniform functions as both armour and art, a metaphor for service, devotion, and belonging.

Visually, the images are as striking as they are quiet. Polished breastplates reflect light like mirrors; wool and leather absorb it like skin. The result is less reportage than reverence, each portrait a moment of stillness amid ceremony.

Codes of Honour is ultimately a study in shared humanity. In revealing the dignity of tradition, Testino reminds us that beauty does not exist only in freedom but also in form, in the collective rhythms that have survived time.