Alive

Alive, Mario Testino’s third book, is a visual travelogue through the worlds he has both discovered and created. “ My pictures are my eyes,” he has said, “I photograph what I see – and what I want to see.” Published by Bullfinch Press Book, Little Brown and Company, 2001

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Foreword by Gwyneth Paltrow

The photographs of Mario Testino, one finds in describing them, are much like the man himself. Irreverent, assertive, and most of all full of life - brimming over with life, as if to push its very essence at you. Mario’s photos always seem to connect you with the truest and lightest aspect of yourself. The aspect that thrives on spontaneity, passion, and a perspective void of judgements.

Mario is intoxicating. When Mario takes your hand and brings you into his world, it is a brighter and edgier place. You feel more. You see more. I always note how “in the moment” I feel when I am with Mario. That is life happening right now. That he is helping me to see and taste it. You somehow feel as if you are at the epicentre of everything lively and new and stylish, whether you are across the table from him at a dinner or you come across a campaign he has done in a magazine. To bring people so startlingly into their “present” is a gift. It is a gift I receive as a friend of Mario’s and as a subject of his as well. It is a gift he shares with all of us through his photographs, which let each of us into the world of Mario Testino.