The Forte di Bard continues its tradition of hosting major exhibitions dedicated to photography and fashion, enriching the exhibition space of the Cellars with important events. From 6 December 2024 to 9 March 2025, it will be possible to visit “Gianfranco Ferré in the lens”, an unpublished exhibition created by Forte di Bard in collaboration with the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre of the Milan Polytechnic and CZ Fotografia, on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the birth of the famous architect and stylist.
The exhibition explores the work of Gianfranco Ferré through a rich corpus of photographic images, black and white and colour prints, slides, contact sheets and iconographic materials, enriched by clothes, sketches and drawings. The absolute protagonists are over 90 photographic works, never presented before, coming from the photographic section of the Gianfranco Ferré Historical Archive. These images bear the signature of eight great masters of fashion photography who collaborated with Ferré for iconic advertising campaigns: Gian Paolo Barbieri, Guy Bourdin, Michel Comte, Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Bettina Rheims and Herb Ritts.
The exhibition is divided into six rooms inspired by the metaphor of the darkroom, which tell both the production process of the images – through contact sheets, color photos, slides and annotated shots – and Ferré's creative method. Six operating principles characterize the path: compose, reduce, emphasize, recalibrate, deconstruct, excite. These concepts connect the photographic language to the designer's vision, combining the shots with design elements such as drawings, material folders and clothes.
The exhibition offers a continuous dialogue between Ferré's work and the distinctive style of each photographer: Barbieri's compositional rigor, Comte's essential shots, Lindbergh's narrative chiaroscuro, Rheims' intense portraits, Bourdin's extravagance, Demarchelier's sophisticated naturalness, Ritts' graphic classicism and Meisel's contemporary interpretation.
Through a multidisciplinary and non-chronological approach, enriched by virtual and augmented reality technologies developed by the Research Center, the exhibition provides a complete vision of Gianfranco Ferré's work. The designer, reflecting on the relationship between fashion and photography, wrote:
“The designer must not only know clearly what he wants, but also choose the right interlocutor, the one who will give body, color, light and magic to his idea. […] Without the ability to create together, to share emotions, to make the eye and the soul work together, photography will be empty, cold, useless and false.” (Gianfranco Ferre, Letters to a young couturier, Balland: Paris, 1995).
The exhibition will be inaugurated on Thursday 5 December 2024 at 18.00:XNUMX pm. An unmissable event to immerse yourself in the vision of one of the greatest masters of Italian fashion.
