Cover Stars of The Face Magazine – Photos 1980 - 2004 - Flashbak

There’s a new exhibition of The Face, the glossy British magazine that through the 80s and 90s was the lightning rod of the progress of popular culture and styled a generation. The Face was well produced, designed and written monthly with music at its core but an expanded focus on the subjects which surrounded and informed it, from fashion and film to nightclubbing and social issues as they affected youth culture.

From its launch in May 1980 til its demise in 2004, The Face showcased musicians and models, notably making Kate Moss one of the most recognisable faces of their time. The cover was the place to be. As the magazine’s founder Nick Logan put it: “No one could get Kim Wilde for an afternoon – but she did it for The Face.”

Logan had transformed the fortunes of Britain’s New Musical Express in the 1970s and launched what became the country’s leading teen music magazine Smash Hits. Before London became the straightened, culturally duller place it is now, as Paul Gorman writes, The Face “was firmly rooted in central London and like its host city it was inclusive, outward-looking, multi-cultural and diverse.

“While it expressed all the best aspects of creative London it was never parochial but simultaneously intent on making the connections to cities and sub cultures around the country and around the world. Based throughout the 1980s and 90s in the enclaves around Carnaby Street, Mortimer Street, Marylebone and Clerkenwell, the magazine and its writers, designers, photographers and stylists became fundamental to the scenes they documented. From Soho’s “The Cult With No Name” through rare groove, rave and British soul to Britpop, Brit Art and beyond, The Face was at the epicentre of the capital’s youth, music, fashion, art, design and club cultures.

“At a time when the area’s venues and nightlife are being challenged by regulation, regeneration and urban development, this exhibition and companion events aim not only to shine a light on central London’s cultural significance but also highlight a time when a magazine could change the world.”

As Neville Brody, the magazine’s first art director at the Face, recalled: “London was this thriving, humming, inspiring, exciting place to be at that time, where anything was possible.”

And The Face made it look better, using photography and stylists, including Polly Banks and Isabella Blow to portray and capture the mood. Photographers like Norbert Schoerner (a co-curator of this exhibition) and Inez & Vinoodh embraced image-manipulation and the use of computer graphics programmes like Photoshop to create the magazine’s visual language. Later in the decade, photographers moved away from digital technologies. Elaine Constantine used to photograph her images in-camera, using flash to create intense and vibrant colours that evoked nostalgic memories of carefree teenage rebellion

As the Guardian notes, “photography evolved in the 1990s from analogue to digital formats, the Face was at the forefront of exploring the potential of new image-manipulation programs, which resulted in bold, colourful and ‘hyperreal’ images. It helped push fashion photography in a new direction – a return to glamour, but with a contemporary twist.”

A new exhibition celebrates some of the most iconic Face portraits. The Face Magazine: Culture Shift is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 20 February until 18 May