The Face: Celebrating 'most influential' magazine

A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery has opened to celebrate the first 25 years of The Face magazine, a lifestyle publication which ran from 1980 to 2004.

Called "The Face Magazine: Culture Shift", the display shows iconic photography of celebrities such as Kate Moss, David Bowie, and Blur.

The magazine, which the gallery described as "a cult British magazine that has shaped the tastes of the nation's youth", was eventually relaunched in 2019 in print and online.

Former assistant editor of The Face Ekow Eshun said: "The Face was probably the most influential magazine when it came to style culture."

Organisers said the exhibition aims to use the medium of portraiture to explore The Face's "monumental influence" throughout the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's.

Mr Eshun told the BBC: "This was a time before the internet, before social media. Magazines could be incredibly influential. The Face is probably the most influential magazine when it came to style culture."

He added: "I think Britain as a society became more visually sophisticated, was able to enjoy music, style, fashion, movies – with more depth, with more insight - as a consequence of the thinking inside The Face."

The former assistant editor said: "I grew up reading The Face cover to cover as a teenager in suburban London, reading the work of different journalists.

"When I became an editor there, I had the same spirit – that you could think about both small things in terms of fashion trend but you could set them within the same context as thinking about quite large things like post-structuralist French philosophy, post-modernism, speculative fiction.

"These very large ideas which ostensibly shouldn't necessarily have had a place next to thinking about new styles and new trends. I think the magazine was one of the first places to take seriously both the small things and big things simultaneously."

The Face was started by Nick Logan, formerly editor of New Musical Express (NME) and creator of teen music magazine, Smash Hits.

Curators of the exhibition said he created The Face when he identified a gap in the the market for a monthly title aimed at a youth audience interested in a broad range of subjects that were not being featured in other magazines.

The style of the magazine chimed with the emergence of a new clubbing scene and the subsequent explosion of rave culture.

Former art director of The Face and consultant curator of the exhibition Lee Swillingham said of the magazine in the 1990's: "It was an amazing place to work. I was made art director at the age of 23 and was free to do what I wanted."

"I took over after the grunge period, the black and white photography – and I took it in a completely new direction, very colourful, very energetic and we were early adopters of using digital tech to enhance pictures."

Asked why the magazine closed in 2004, Mr Swillingham said "I think culture changed in the early 2000's , the magazine was competing with the internet and there was a very saturated print market at the same time."

He added: "It is important to note it was revived in 2019 and they are doing a very good job."

Senior curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery Sabina Jaskot-Gill said: "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 – the magazine always allowed its contributors the creative freedom to react against the prevailing mood, to create a shift in culture."

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