Finished: 06/12/2024 – 09/03/2025
From 6 December 2024 to 9 March 2025, the exhibition Gianfranco Ferré: within the lens, organized by Fort Bard and curated by the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre at Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with CZ Fotografia, offers an exclusive look at the work of the iconic architect and fashion designer, marking 80 years since his birth.
The exhibition is designed to showcase Ferré’s work through photographs, black-and-white and colour prints, slides, and contact sheets, further enhanced by garments, sketches, and drawings.
At the heart of the exhibition is the photographic section of the Gianfranco Ferré Archive, showcasing more than 90 never-before-seen images by eight legendary fashion photographers who worked with Ferré on some of his most memorable advertising campaigns: Gian Paolo Barbieri, Guy Bourdin, Michel Comte, Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, Bettina Rheims and Herb Ritts.
The six exhibition rooms are inspired by the concept of the camera obscura, revealing the image-making process through contact sheets, colour photographs, slides, and photographers’ notes. At the same time, they unveil Ferré’s approach to design, highlighting six principles central to his work — composing, reducing, emphasizing, recalibrating, deconstructing, and evoking emotion — connecting these photographic concepts to his fashion creations. Each image is paired with sketches, fabric boards, and actual garments, drawing parallels between photography and Ferré’s design ethos.
The exhibition establishes a dynamic dialogue between Ferré’s designs and each photographer’s distinctive style: Barbieri‘s meticulous composition, Comte‘s quick, minimalist shots, Lindbergh’s moody chiaroscuro, Rheims‘ powerful portraits, Bourdin’s eccentric framing, Demarchelier‘s studied naturalness, Ritts‘ graphic classicism, and Meisel’s ability to capture a sharp vision of modernity within the glossy world of fashion.
