Mario Testino

Mario Testino is a Peruvian-British fashion photographer whose four-decade career has made him one of the most-influential fashion photographers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries — particularly through his work with the British royal family and his magazine work for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and V Magazine. He was born Mario Eduardo Testino Silva on October 30, 1954, in Lima, Peru. He came from a Peruvian-Italian family and studied at the University of San Diego before moving to London in 1976 to pursue photography.

His career through the 1980s was focused on London editorial work for The Face, i-D, and Stern. His commercial breakthrough came in the 1990s with his work for major fashion houses including Gucci, Versace, Burberry, and Calvin Klein, plus magazine cover work for Vogue editions in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. His 1990s aesthetic — characterized by warm-toned natural lighting, intimate emotional engagement with subjects, and substantial inclusion of personal photographic backgrounds — became one of the late-20th-century fashion-photography styles.

His royal-family photography began in 1997 when Diana, Princess of Wales asked him to photograph her for the Vanity Fair July 1997 cover — her last major photo shoot before her August 31, 1997 death. The Diana photographs cemented his royal-family photography position. He has since photographed Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday portraits (2006), Prince William and Catherine Middleton's official engagement portraits (2010), Prince George's christening (2013), and dozens of other royal-family commissions.

Testino's career has been complicated by 2018 sexual-misconduct allegations from multiple male models, which were detailed in a New York Times investigation. He has denied the allegations. Major magazines including American Vogue and Vanity Fair announced in early 2018 that they would no longer commission new work from him. He has continued to work selectively in non-American markets and has been supported in his ongoing operations through his MATE arts space in Lima, Peru. He continues to live primarily in London.

His name Mario is the Italian and Spanish form of Marius (from the Latin Marius, an old Roman family name possibly connected to the Roman god Mars). Mario has been continuously among the most-popular Spanish-American and Italian-American boys' names for over a century.