When the Face journal launched in 1980, it shortly garnered a cult following. Based by the British music journalist Nick Logan, the journal used daring typography, uncooked and rapid pictures, and cultivated an “genuine” aesthetic that was a stark distinction to its trend rivals. The artwork course was contemporary; employees had been inspired to take dangers. It sparked the careers of big-name photographers equivalent to Corinne Day (who famously captured a 16-year-old Kate Moss on the quilt of the journal in 1990), Juergen Teller, Nick Knight and Elaine Constantine. A response towards the airbrushed perfection of Eighties trend pictures, it showcased a pure, easy and undone form of magnificence.
The Face was the voice of the counter-cultural youth hanging out within the skate parks, streets and golf equipment of the Eighties and Nineties; the style-conscious members of Technology X. It was greater than {a magazine} – it was a bible, introducing its loyal readers to underground music, trend and subversive concepts that no different publication was masking. Earlier than the rise of the web and the delivery of social media, the Face might join you to different like-minded people in a approach that felt particular. Each problem felt like a collectible – I nonetheless have a stack in my mom’s loft, over 20 years since I purchased my final problem within the early Noughties. The journal closed in 2004 (in 2019, it was relaunched beneath a brand new artistic group – and with one or two senior members of employees reprising their roles from the early 2000s.)
The Face Journal: Tradition Shift (till 18 Could 2025) on the Nationwide Portrait Gallery is the primary main exhibition to deal with the journal’s archive of portraiture and trend pictures. That includes covers, movie and trend spreads, the exhibition units out to indicate how the Face redefined British journal journalism, and most of the pictures on show have by no means been seen exterior of its pages earlier than. The present invitations its guests, for a joyful couple of hours, to really feel a part of the vitality and temper of the Eighties, Nineties and early 2000s. For a time frame, the Face was all the things to those that needed to be one step forward of everybody else. Studying it made you are feeling a part of the perfect membership on the town.