Mario Testino

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a photographer. Born and brought up in Peru, he first came to London in his early twenties, and having tried his hand as a waiter, decided to become a photographer instead.

Presenter0:39

He set about making himself known in an uncompromising way. He simply rang up editors of glossy magazines and harangued them. Bit by bit his client base grew. Fifteen years later it exploded into something huge. Harper's Bazaar had chosen him to photograph their top models, then Madonna asked him to do a Versace shoot with her, and after that Diana Princess of Wales asked him to take some pictures of her.

Presenter1:04

In all of these and in the many other pictures he's taken, his unmistakable style shows through. He makes his subjects feel great, so they look great. Happy women, full of life, whatever the rest of the world is saying about them. A few years ago, the National Portrait Gallery mounted a major retrospective of his work, but he says he doesn't pretend to be an artist. Commercial photographers are salesmen, he insists. My job is to sell clothes. He is Mario Testino. It's a little more than that, though, isn't it, Mario? I mean, you sell people.

Mario Testino1:37

Well it's a little bit um I get often criticized for saying that I'm not an artist because people say that I undermine the work of a fashion photographer as in general, not just my own. But I think we are really a mixture of things. I for me a fine artist is somebody that doesn't have any limitations, no constraints. Whilst me as a fashion photographer, I always have to be limited what maybe my client wants or the model they want or an outfit that I have to show. And it might not always be exactly what I would have chosen.

Presenter2:05

But what you choose usually is beauty. I mean, that's what you like. You're selling beauty. You're selling good looks, aren't you?

Mario Testino2:08

Yeah.

Mario Testino2:09

Yeah.

Mario Testino2:10

Well, I'm selling a w a lifestyle, a world, uh, something that you almost cannot attain. We have to make people want what they see in that magazine, but we want them to throw that magazine away and want the next issue'cause we have to sell twelve a year.

Presenter2:24

But it means that you've got to be at the edge always. So when you're given a subject I mean, how does it work? If you're given a subject like Liz Hurley to photograph and, you know, what did you say to her?'Cause she she ended up lying on a rug, didn't she, in little white knickers and a sort of tall

Mario Testino2:37

Probably I said to her, You look hideous to break the i you know, sometimes you have to break the ice and you have to make people laugh and she's like, No, I don't And that creates magic, you know, a sort of magic that can be in a fashion photograph.

Presenter2:51

You've got to have the idea, though, that's the point, isn't it? Oh, yeah, you've got to do it. I mean, did you say to Liz Hurley?

Mario Testino2:54

Oh yeah, you have to do it.

Presenter2:57

We've seen enough of you in these vampish frocks at present.

Mario Testino3:00

Oh yeah, at that time I wanted to go intimate with her because we had were seeing her all the time with you. Remember that uh dress that Gianni Versace made for her that made her really

Presenter3:09

With the safety.

Mario Testino3:09

An icon of safety pins. So we were seeing her really on red carpet most of the time, and I thought, what would it be like to be really her boyfriend and be at home and bring it to the public? So that was my idea. And it's true that, you know, they don't always agree immediately, and you have to coax them into it and convince them.

Presenter3:27

Yes, I mean, for instance, there's another one. We've got it in front of us here. You've got Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.

Presenter3:34

Not to put too fine a point on it, sitting on the lavatory together. Really not. But two two separate lavatories.

Mario Testino3:37

But you see

Mario Testino3:39

It is a funny thing with models, you share their lives with you and you know, we see girls naked all day long because they have to change many, many times, you know. So all of a sudden nudity becomes something that you don't even notice.

Presenter3:52

But the point is that in order for them to allow you to point the camera at them, they have to trust you.

Mario Testino3:57

Isn't that something that you acquire with time?

Presenter4:00

Yeah.

Mario Testino4:00

You know, I was once in Budapest photography in Madonna and they had just announced that she was pregnant and

Mario Testino4:06

There were two hundred photographers outside and I'm in her changing room and she's showing me her stomach and I'm photographing her like that and I said to her, My God, can you imagine if we were to sell these pictures, we'd make a lot of money And she said, That's just exactly what I let you do then, because I know you would never do a thing like that. I think if you take people into your own as if as if it was yourself, then nobody gets hurt and nobody thinks that you're taking advantage of them.

Presenter4:31

Tell me about your first record. We're sending you to a desert island. You know about this desert island.

Mario Testino4:34

Yes, I hope it's a desert island with lots of comfort and, you know, pillows and beautiful people.

Presenter4:44

Come on, who's the first beautiful person you're taking with you?

Mario Testino4:44

Yeah.

Mario Testino4:46

Seed wishes, of course.

Presenter4:47

Uh-huh.

Mario Testino4:51

Life that's more

Mario Testino4:54

But my boy

Mario Testino4:57

And they're behind

Mario Testino5:00

Uh

Speaker 25:00

And more, much more than this.

Presenter5:11

It was Sid Vicious's rendition of My Wear. You really like that, don't you, Moe?

Mario Testino5:15

I like the irreverence of it, I think, and the idea that you can actually go for anything and do it. You know, I I heard this song I think by Frank Sinatra originally, you know, and I used to love it then.

Presenter5:25

It's quite different from that, yes.

Mario Testino5:27

You know, I had a very interesting upbringing in the sense that I didn't really belong to where I was raised, in the sense that my ideals, my way of being, my way of dressing, my was hugely criticized because I didn't fit in. I was different, you know, and being different wasn't the thing that was accepted in my

Presenter5:44

How were you different? Describe.

Mario Testino5:45

Oh, I wore flowered trousers with platform shoes of two colors. I had an afro and I, you know, I was in fashion and the hippie movement was the thing.

Presenter5:53

But it didn't go down well in too l too well in Lima Peru. Did people laugh at you in the street?

Mario Testino5:55

Well, in Lima, Peru.

Mario Testino5:58

Oh yeah, and screamed abuse. I mean from very early on I had to use my little allowance I had an allowance, a weekly allowance, but it all went in taxis'cause I couldn't take public transport. It was it was

Presenter6:08

You couldn't take public transport.

Mario Testino6:09

Well, it was a choice. Either I was beaten up or I you know, or I wore what I wanted to wear.

Presenter6:15

But your family was obviously well healed. I mean middle class.

Mario Testino6:17

middle class, not they weren't rich, but they adore their kids and they all they wanted us to live as if we were rich. We weren't rich because I had all my friends at school that were a lot richer than we were. But my father was generous and gave us more

Mario Testino6:33

Dino.

Presenter6:34

And you were indulged, you were looked after the market.

Mario Testino6:35

Yeah, I was spoiled. I think that because they saw I was different and be to compensate maybe the verbal abuse that people would have on me, my parents were extra generous to me. I mean

Presenter6:46

But but go back much earlier than that to when you were a little boy,'cause as I read about you, you were really quite quiet, rather serious, obviously very bright at school.

Mario Testino6:54

Oh yeah, I was quite bright. They used to say I was near genius at maths'cause I was the only one that could could do it. So I only had to do maths for half of the year because I went too fast for the rest of the class.

Presenter6:54

Yeah.

Mario Testino7:06

I was quiet, but not I wasn't shy, but I

Presenter7:09

Yeah.

Mario Testino7:11

Yes, at one point I want to but, you know, we have a very strong Catholic upbringing. I mean, I don't think that I would consider myself a hundred percent like I used to be because too many things have happened and, you know, I don't completely agree with everything the church says or does or so I've lived my life according to my, you know

Speaker 27:21

Yeah.

Presenter7:21

Don't

Presenter7:28

But it stays with you, that traditional upbringing.

Mario Testino7:31

Life is about give and take. What you give is what you get, you know, it just comes back. And I try to apply that to my life, try not to harm people, try to help people. And in a funny way I think it comes back. Without you even trying, it's um there for you.

Presenter7:45

Become number two.

Mario Testino7:47

So what's our next song? It's Finestampa, which is a song I grew up with, and it's sung by Caetano Veloso, who is a friend of mine from Brazil.

Speaker 27:54

Tell vasia los aguales, and los patios encantados, telle vasías las plasuelas, ya los amores sunados. Vere dita que si arruya contajetanes bordados, taconde cha quín de ceda.

Speaker 28:09

Y just almost legre, cuando tenduna de sol que de recor cantando por site puede el canzar, fines tampa caballero quiente pu dier aguar.

Presenter8:23

Caetano Veloso and Fina Estampa. But you don't have to be flamboyant anymore. You say you're very conservative this morning. It has to be said.

Mario Testino8:30

Well, times change, years change. I maybe thought I was a model at the time for myself, and now I do what I used to do on myself, on models.

Presenter8:39

So you dress them up.

Mario Testino8:39

Thank God.

Presenter8:40

They they wear the feathers. Okay. Tell me, you came to London, you were about twenty two. You'd been to university all over the shop by then, hadn't you? And still not got a degree.

Mario Testino8:48

Yeah, we'll still

Mario Testino8:49

I'd done a year of economy, two years of law in Peru, then I went to California to do international relations, which I really didn't even do because I hated. I arrived and it was completely different to what I had expected. To San Diego. Yeah. I was still on my high horse of thinking that I was glamorous and chic and I arrived and they put me in a dorm with three other kids from middle America, which I found so provincial.

Presenter9:00

This was San Diego, yeah.

Mario Testino9:12

Provincial queens, no so

Presenter9:15

You'd come to London.

Mario Testino9:16

So I thought I'd come to London. I loved it immediately. One, it was clean. And you know, South Americans were quite clean actually at home. We're obsessed. You know, my friends aren't that obsessed in England, but the streets were clean. I was so amazed by that. And I loved it. And I by chance found a school of photography'cause I knew to get a student's visa at the time.

Presenter9:37

How long did it last, this course?

Mario Testino9:38

Well, it was a two-year course, but my teacher passed away and I was uh sort of in the streets four months later.

Presenter9:45

Is that the only training you've ever had?

Mario Testino9:47

That's the only training I had. And then an amazing thing happened to me. I met this girl and she got opened a studio. And they said, Look, you can come and assist us. You know, we we're not gonna really pay you, but you can come and you can learn and you can help. And I had nothing to do, so it sounded really exciting and I did it.

Mario Testino10:03

And um my parents at the time said to me that I should go back to Peru because they couldn't afford maintaining me here.

Mario Testino10:11

But I did not want to go and um

Presenter10:14

You were having too good a time here, Byron. You were partying hard, huh?

Mario Testino10:17

I loved it here. I like the tolerance of the people. Here you can be anything you want to be, you can do anything, and people tolerate you. And it made me think, you know, you can be you. And I guess that's a thing that England gave me that I shall never ever forget. And

Presenter10:33

But you weren't entirely you'cause you ended up being a waiter'cause the parents stopped the money. Well, yeah, and all you did not like being a waiter, did you?

Mario Testino10:36

Who else?

Mario Testino10:38

Well, yeah, and all my life

Mario Testino10:40

You know, I wasn't really a good waiter as such. I was good with people socially and they asked to sit in my table, but I was still I had those um South American phobias of dirty in your hands. So I would go and pick up one plate at a time when at the table there were thirty plates and I would pick it, smile at them and say, I'll be back, go, drop the plate, wash my hands, come back next plate.

Presenter11:03

This was in Peppermint Park, which was a sort of American style well, very it was the first American style training.

Mario Testino11:04

Which was a source.

Mario Testino11:07

It was the first American style training hang in the worked there for a little while.

Presenter11:10

I mean

Mario Testino11:13

Maybe three months?

Presenter11:14

But you met the right people there.

Mario Testino11:16

I met a lot of very interesting people and they were all became my clients, actors, writers, models, singers. So I photographed them. That's how sort of part of my beginning, you know.

Presenter11:27

It all happens for you, Doug.

Mario Testino11:28

I think you

Mario Testino11:30

I have a guardian angel. But you know, I went to see a clairvoyant years ago and she said to me, You have had a lot of deaths in your life and these are the people that protect you. My nanny died, my brother died, my best friend died, but you know, I've had l a lot of deaths being young. And she said, It's these people that protect you and maybe they are, like you say, my guardian angels.

Presenter11:51

Let's pause there for some music. What about number three? What's that?

Mario Testino11:54

David Bowie Life on Mars

Presenter11:56

Why do you want that?

Mario Testino11:58

David Bowie really changed my life. I think he made me realize, without and I didn't know him just from his record covers, that I wasn't so much of a freak and that maybe being a freak wasn't so bad. And maybe that's what brought me also to London, because where he was coming from.

Speaker 212:12

Take a look at her, oh ma'am, leaning on the wrong guy, oh ma'am, wonder if you'll ever know.

Speaker 312:24

Uh

Speaker 212:24

Who's done the best of the show?

Speaker 212:28

Is there life on Mars?

Presenter12:37

David Bowie and Life on Mars. So Mario Test, you know, they were pretty lean years through the second half of the seventies and all through the eighties really. You lived in it sounds to me

Mario Testino12:47

Do you know the second half of the seventies were just fun. I partied nonstop. The eighties, I started in nineteen eighteen. The first five years I partied nonstop and I thought I was Superman and I could just go to bed at four and get up at eight every single day or until I probably collapsed.

Mario Testino13:03

And it's really until the eight of the end of the eighties that at the beginning of the nineties I met this woman in France called Carine Reutfeld. Today she's the editor in chief of French Volk.

Presenter13:14

But is that the time when you were haranguing these people on the phone? I mean, you were visiting.

Mario Testino13:17

Well, at the beginning of the eighties I really had to call people thirty times to get an appointment because it is difficult. And now that I'm in that same lifestyle, I realize that it just is difficult. You know, people call you, they want to see you, and you want to see them, but

Presenter13:33

Yeah, but they didn't want to see you do it.

Mario Testino13:33

You have fun.

Mario Testino13:34

Well no, they do you blame them with my accent in a coin box? You know, at the time I had to make my calls from a coin box, so you would hear two, two, two, two and then you put people hung up before you put the money and I was hysterical because to get those two P had been tough.

Presenter13:51

Were you offering them when you were ringing? What were you saying you could do? Or were you just saying, let me come into the office?

Mario Testino13:55

Saying let me come in.

Mario Testino13:56

This is the way photographers work. Basically, testing is when you go and do a picture that is not paid for, you pay for it all yourself. And it's to show what you would like to do. Your style, your taste in girls, your taste in light, hair, makeup, whatever. And so then you do a little portfolio and you go and show this portfolio around and you have to convince people. And sometimes

Mario Testino14:16

You yourself don't think they're that great a picture, but you have to go and say, Isn't this amazing? And they're like, No.

Presenter14:22

But you were one of the those classic nuisances, were you then? They just thought, Get this guy out of the way.

Mario Testino14:25

Oh yeah.

Mario Testino14:27

You know, I had no choice. I needed to earn money to eat, to pay my rent, to you know, it's not. At the Old Charing Cross Hospital. You see, I lived in Chelsea before, when my parents sent me to study, I took a little apartment in Chelsea, it was great. And then when they cut me off and wanted me to go back to Peru, they never cut me off the moral support. They just cut me off the money. So, you know, my friend said to me, We have to go and live in this place. He had found this place. It had been converted into a dossier's home, really like a charity place, you know. It was St. Mango's Trust, I think it was called. And one floor they hadn't been able to fix because they had run out of money was the X-ray department. And it was amazing. It was an enormous floor, you know.

Mario Testino15:11

And we took it. The only thing that was odd was that we shared the building with Trumps and Alcoholics, so you would walk out into the corridor and it was very likely that you'd have puke and pee and whatever you can imagine.

Presenter15:22

You can imagine how long did you live there?

Mario Testino15:23

Seven years, because

Presenter15:25

Did you ever see anybody from those?

Mario Testino15:26

You know it's amazing. The other day I did a job the other day, two years ago I did a job for the Royal Ballet and um I was talking to the PR lady outside of the opera house and these two really, really almost on the floor hanging on to their live tramps and completely out of their mind, screaming my name. And the the the people from the Royal Ballet were you know them? Like, yeah, I used to live with them. They were like, Really?

Mario Testino15:55

But it was good for me because it made me realize that, you know, between that and the restaurant, nothing is forever, nothing is granted, nothing is is assured.

Presenter16:05

Next record.

Mario Testino16:07

My next song for you is Grace John's La Vienros

Presenter16:11

Why?

Mario Testino16:12

And these are my party years. You know, I just thought I'd give you a feeling of how it used to be going to the Embassy Club in Monkberries in the seventies and early eighties.

Speaker 216:26

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 216:29

Don't you cut away from the piece of peace?

Speaker 216:39

You messy, let your voice.

Presenter16:46

Race Jones and La Vien Rose. So, Mario, you began to develop your own style and have creative ideas of your own, but arguably they they weren't initially very distinctive and you went

Mario Testino16:56

Well, what happened is that when I arrived to England I tried to emulate the English. That's what I was seeing and I certainly was everything but English or my style or anything.

Mario Testino17:06

And I try to copy and learn in the beatens in the you know, that whole world of the English.

Mario Testino17:13

what do you call them, the intellectuals of England. And really I realized when I met Karine Reutfeld, this lady who today is the director of French Folk, she said to me, But really, who's your woman? you know?

Presenter17:26

How would you define that woman then in that moment? What

Mario Testino17:29

I think I like a I like ambiguity anyhow. Men, women, it doesn't matter, you know. I don't like a man that comes in like a gorilla into a room because I don't believe it. You know, I like a woman that has a certain strength, that can go to a party or wherever on her own. I like sex, so I like a girl to be sexy. I like elegance and I like a bit of humor. And that's where I guess I've liked the English so much,'cause there's always humor in everything that is style here.

Presenter17:54

Everything

Presenter17:55

But on top of all of that, if we're now defining the Testina woman, she's also, is she not, in a way that.

Presenter18:02

Cecil Beaton's woman, Norman Parkinson's woman, Terry O'Neill's woman was not is totally approachable, real.

Mario Testino18:12

I like reality. I don't like uh fantasies that you cannot believe exist. It's true, I am Peruvian, I'm South American, I did not grow up in England, but I love the English. I you know, it's like a a a mixture of things and

Mario Testino18:25

You know, I think a photographer is a real documenter. We are obliged to document our times because I have learned about so many things from other photographers.

Mario Testino18:34

You know, his references have taught me so much. When I approach any subject or anything, I often think of his work.

Presenter18:40

But it all happened as a result of all of that, didn't it? When you realized, you know, you had to identify what woman meant and I started getting worse. This is sort of nineteen ninety two. Harper's take you nineteen ninety five, the call comes from Madonna, your honor.

Mario Testino18:46

Everything changed and I started getting work.

Mario Testino18:49

Yeah.

Mario Testino18:54

Yeah, you know, I went to Harper's Bazaar for three years in America and then Anna Winter called me to go to Vogue, where I have been for the last ten years. I think at the end of the day, if they didn't want me, I'd be in a lot of trouble because I don't know who I would work for.

Presenter19:07

Next record.

Mario Testino19:08

My next song is Sunday Girl by Blondie. When I lived in the hospital, this is what I used to listen to and I never will forget arriving home and we were lived in the second floor and I could hear this song from downstairs'cause my roommates we were all mad about her.

Presenter19:28

My long news dream.

Presenter19:31

There's ice cream still and sweet.

Speaker 219:33

Yeah.

Presenter19:34

Try a

Speaker 219:35

Bye.

Presenter19:36

Uh

Speaker 219:39

Hey, I saw your guy with a different girl. Looks like he's in another world.

Speaker 219:47

But then hide some big girl

Speaker 219:52

Hurry up, hurry up and wait

Speaker 219:55

Uh

Presenter19:55

Blondie and Sunday girl. Tell me then, Mario, about that very famous photographic session with uh Diana Princess of Wales. I mean those pictures came, as we know, to be seen as marking a new era in her life, because they were

Presenter20:07

post the divorce and post the bulimia and post the feuding. But in fact, of course, five months later she was dead.

Presenter20:14

How did the Commission come about in the first place?

Mario Testino20:16

You know, I I got a call from a lady called Meredith Etherington Smith, who I had worked with at Harper's and Queen at earlier on, and she

Mario Testino20:24

Was working at the time with Christie's, and her job was to special events. She looked after special events, and they had gotten together with Princess Diana to pro to sell her dresses. And they had thought of maybe promoting the dresses through photographs of her wearing them. And I have to say that, you know, at the time, it wasn't really what I wanted to do, photographing people. But I have to say, she was unbelievable because she came in and I said, Would you really mind if we change a little bit your hair and maybe your makeup? And she's like, I love what you do, do whatever you want to do.

Presenter20:58

But how much thought had you given it beforehand? I mean, obviously she was the most photographed woman in the world. You had thought before that I'm gonna just kind of simplify her.

Mario Testino21:07

You know, I thought I tried to determine what would make the sitting special and I thought, you know, it's it's odd that I have the possibility and opportunity to be sitting next to her in a very private way, in a very intimate way. And then I said to her, It's really difficult for me to call you ma'am, because I call my mother mom and you're younger than me So and she said, Oh, don't worry, just call me Diana, which already broke the ice.

Mario Testino21:31

And we started chatting. I said, Let's do it as if we're just having a conversation, the two of us on a sofa. And that's how I started.

Presenter21:37

And you told her to take her shoes off, huh?

Mario Testino21:39

And her jewels, because I thought that maybe it would be better to have her real, you know.

Presenter21:45

And you know

Mario Testino21:46

And you know, it's funny when the pictures came out, people said to me, My God, you changed her and I said, But I I didn't do that much, I only and I thought that she actually

Presenter21:53

But how much do you that what one really wants to know is how much in doing that you had a plan, because in sort of stripping away all of uh these outward shows of the princess with the capital P, were you also stripping away was that your intention, to strip away her defences and make her look

Mario Testino22:10

Make her look a fantastic real person. You know, we go back. Yeah, we go back to this thing that artifice that I don't like.

Presenter22:13

You know we go back.

Mario Testino22:17

falseness, I like reality, you know, and

Presenter22:20

But that was your thought, was it? Or was it something that just happened?

Mario Testino22:21

What was it or was it?

Mario Testino22:22

I think an unconscious way of thought. No, I just wanted to

Mario Testino22:27

feel that whoever would see the pic pictures would feel that they were with her. And you know the oddest thing is that now I'm doing a show at Kensington Palace on her. They asked me to do four rooms that are gonna be dedicated to Diana for two years. And

Speaker 222:39

There

Mario Testino22:42

When I went to see the prints at the lab, they're large prints, and I tell you I had a knot in my throat because I could feel her. She felt there in she felt next to me. It's a really, really strange thing. That was my idea when I did the pictures, but now when I see them blown up, it they are

Mario Testino23:02

They're very present. They were very real. You know, you can feel the person.

Presenter23:06

And what did she think of the photographs when you showed them to her?

Mario Testino23:09

Oh, I think she she said to me at the time that her children had said that it was the most hair they had seen.

Presenter23:16

And did you ever see her again after that?

Mario Testino23:18

Yes, twice. And one day I was sitting in the airport in Paris at Charles de Gaulle, just about to board my flight and the phone rings and hi, it's Diane and I was like, Oh my god, you know, if anybody in this room would know that you're on the phone, would they would just like flip But then I didn't see her afterwards. But I have to say I've been very lucky to be able to photograph her children and they are as incredible as her.

Presenter23:45

Record number six.

Mario Testino23:47

Bebel Gilbert and Baby. Bebelle is a friend of mine. I guess I chose this particular one because when I was seeing her at Somerset House, she screamed out loud, oh, this song goes to Mario, and I was so embarrassed.

Speaker 224:03

You must take a look at the new land

Speaker 224:07

The swimming pool and the teeth of your friends

Presenter24:12

Yeah.

Speaker 224:12

The dirty my hand

Presenter24:18

You must take a look at me.

Presenter24:29

Beber Gilberto and Baby.

Presenter24:32

They all turned up for you, Mario, the stars, when you had your retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery a few years ago, didn't they? Madonna, Kate Mask, Gwyneth Paltrow, L. McPherson.

Presenter24:43

What is it? How would you characterize this relationship that a photographer has with with his sitters, if that's what you call them? I mean, is it like you know, they say that women tell all their secrets to their hairdressers. Is it a similar kind of thing? Is it that personal?

Mario Testino24:57

I think that for all these um celebrities, I think that we are like

Mario Testino25:03

They're communicators, you know. If they wanna say something in a style, with a smile or with a grimness or with something, we are the people that will communicate that.

Mario Testino25:12

to the people and all of these girls especially, they're very conscious that, you know, if you like them you will make sure that they look in the good light and that they look good, you know?

Presenter25:22

And look as they they want to

Mario Testino25:24

They would like to look exactly.

Presenter25:25

But that that's the point that people make about it, isn't it that that you are in collusion with them to present an image that they might want to present at that moment because it suits them.

Mario Testino25:36

You know, it's interesting. I just photographed not not just, but a couple of months, Jennifer Anniston. She'd just come out of her this whole saga of her separating from Brad Peet and Angeline and all this, you know. And I explained it to her, I wanna make you like the sexiest American beauty, you know, and and I did her naked just with a man's shirt, so you can see a little bit of her body, but different ways of seeing it is marketing, yeah. I mean, that's why I sometimes say we are salespeople, you know, because we try to sell, sell a dream, sell an idea, sell a piece of clothing.

Presenter25:58

It's marketing.

Speaker 226:00

Yeah.

Presenter26:00

Yeah.

Presenter26:04

Because we

Presenter26:08

Or an image. And that's what we're saying.

Mario Testino26:08

Yeah.

Presenter26:11

What about somebody like Kate Moss, who again you've always you know helped present as someone sort of just carefree and beautiful, and now obviously we're painfully aware that there was really some torrid stuff going on inside there?

Mario Testino26:26

You know, only because we've seen it. How many things do people do that we don't see? You know. I th I know Kate very well. I don't think she's at all tormented, torrid, depressed. And I have to say I'm not a witness to seeing her debauched or out of control. I've I've seen her working, you know, I work with her.

Mario Testino26:46

And I tell you, I've been working with her since she was fifteen. Not many people work at such an early age. And since fifteen till today, she's never not been there on a shoot, never said to me, Oh, I'm tired, I don't want to work or never. She works from eight in the morning to

Mario Testino26:58

twelve at night if need be. So, you know, my

Mario Testino27:02

My vision of first is not a negative vision at all.

Presenter27:05

But do you think that kind of life is too much pressure when someone like that starts at such an early age?

Mario Testino27:09

You know, I couldn't be on drugs every single day. I couldn't drink every single day.

Mario Testino27:13

But I might want to go one night and get really drunk and you know, because I need to escape because it's too much, you know, the the stress.

Mario Testino27:21

And I think all of us are like that. I mean, there is a moment when everybody wants to just lose that little bit of control. Who knows if maybe that was her moment? And we just happened to see that moment and all of a sudden we're judging out of ten minutes the life of somebody and destroying it. I don't think life is so black and white.

Presenter27:41

Next record.

Mario Testino27:42

My next song, Soft Cell, Tainted Love. And this to me represents a period of when I lived in Covent Garden and Soho started to grow. And they had a nightclub called Gases in a little attic, which we went every single Thursday. And at this time was the beginning of my prof of me working. And I never went to bed before 4 or 5 in the morning. But I I was the only one of all my friends that had to be up at 8. So this song stuck with me for a long time.

Mario Testino28:14

Share teams to go.

Presenter28:17

Nowhere and I've lost my light For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night

Presenter28:27

Once I ran to you, now I run from you.

Speaker 228:33

This tainted love you've given I give you all a boy could give you

Presenter28:40

Soft cell and tainted love. So now you're the star, Mario. You're a glamorous icon. You know, the the the paparazzi come out for you sometimes, don't they? Do you get treated like one as you travel the world on your assignments?

Mario Testino28:52

It's a pity in the radio you cannot see when one blasts or

Presenter28:56

Yeah.

Mario Testino28:56

In a way I am a performer'cause I have to perform in front of my sisters in order for to break the ice and for them to give in. You know, I have to do a whole

Mario Testino29:05

Number and but a star, I'm lucky, I think that I'm not, you know, considered in that particular

Presenter29:12

Your um your father died, sadly, some years ago, but um what does your mother think of her boy?

Mario Testino29:18

Oh, I think she's always loved her boy and protected her boy. You know, she had six kids, of which one of them died, but from very early on I think my mother has always said, I don't care what my children are, I want everybody close to me, so I'll be accepting everything and you know, she's had lots of surprises and she's just carried on. But she obviously, you know, thrives on it. And I'm like, Mom, it's uh transitory You know, next year they'll have forgotten me.

Presenter29:46

Last record

Mario Testino29:47

So my last song is a song of a band called Zweiraum Vonung. Not that I speak any German, but I've been going a lot to Berlin and I'm obsessed by new, new, new. You know, I like discovering things. And Berlin is my city of choice at the moment, and this is the band I found there.

Presenter30:06

Dation too.

Presenter30:09

They he on this tomorrow, No these mindly too.

Presenter30:17

Gotta

Presenter30:29

Sveiram vonung, Turum flat, they call themselves, and their song is called Doo und Ich, you and I. Um if you could only take one of those eight records, Mario, which one would you take?

Mario Testino30:39

I guess I would take Fina Estampa because I left Peru when I was young, like nineteen the first time, and this is the thing that takes me back to home all the time and to my origins and to m you know. I think that I would take that.

Presenter30:55

And what about a book? We give you the Bible, and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare, actually.

Mario Testino31:00

I would take Damien by Hermann Hesse, which was one of the first books that really touched my life and made me think differently.

Presenter31:07

Yeah.

Mario Testino31:08

When I was like fifteen, sixteen.

Presenter31:10

And a luxury we give you. What would you like?

Mario Testino31:13

You know, I thought a lot about it and I think at the end I was thinking of a camera and I was thinking, you know, if I'm gonna go to an island and there's not a lot to do, I'll take my pillow. Be comfortable, comfort.

Presenter31:23

You're a man who likes his luxuries, aren't you?

Mario Testino31:25

Well, little luxuries, you know. I work very, very, very hard, you know, from eight in the morning to ten at night every day, Saturdays inclusive, and every Sunday I'm on an aeroplane, so a little bit of something to fall back on.

Presenter31:39

Mario Testina, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Mario Testino31:42

My pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 331:52

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.