Mario Testino

Mario Eduardo Testino Silva was born on 30 October 1954 in Lima, Peru. He enrolled at Universidad del Pacifico to study economics (1972 to 1973), moved to the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru to study law (1973 to 1974), and went on to the University of San Diego in California to study international relations (1975). He left before completing a degree at any of the three.

In 1976 Testino moved to London and turned to photography. He trained through apprenticeships at the John Vickers Studio (1977) and the Paul Nugent Studio (1978) in London. Through the 1980s and 1990s he built a career shooting for Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, and major fashion houses including Gucci, Burberry, Chanel, and Dolce and Gabbana. His 1997 photographs of Diana, Princess of Wales are among the most reproduced images of her.

In 2002 the National Portrait Gallery, London, mounted Portraits, a solo exhibition that later toured internationally. In 2010 Testino was given a solo show at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Todo o Nada. He founded Museo MATE in Lima as a home for his archive and for contemporary art programming in Peru; sources give the founding year as either 2012 or 2013. In January 2014 he received an honorary OBE for his contribution to photography and charitable work.

In January 2018, The New York Times published an investigation in which more than a dozen male models accused Testino and photographer Bruce Weber of sexual misconduct during shoots. Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue and other titles that had employed Testino for decades, said it would stop commissioning new work from him and Weber while the allegations were reviewed. The allegations and the industry's response were widely reported, including by the BBC.

He continues to live and work in London and remains professionally active, with solo exhibitions running into 2026.

Testino's reputation rests on a combination of technical fluency and an ability to make sitters, from supermodels to heads of state to Diana, Princess of Wales, appear both glamorous and at ease. Museum survey shows, including the National Portrait Gallery's 2002 Portraits exhibition and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza's 2010 Todo o Nada, have treated him as a defining chronicler of late twentieth and early twenty-first century fashion and celebrity culture. His standing has also been shaped by the sexual misconduct allegations reported in January 2018, which prompted Conde Nast to pause new commissions and became part of the wider public reckoning within the fashion industry that year.

Public auction data for Testino's own photographs is thin. The highest price identified in available auction-market sources is for Exposed, Kate Moss, London, reported at GBP 225,000 (roughly USD 290,000 at the exchange rate then prevailing) in a sale reported for September 2020; the auction house and exact sale date could not be independently confirmed. A further work, Kate in Blue Cafe, sold for GBP 11,475 at Bonhams London on 25 February 2021. Separately, in September 2017 Sotheby's London sold works by other artists from Testino's personal contemporary art collection in the Shake It Up sale, raising roughly GBP 8.6 million for Museo MATE. That sale concerns art he collected, not photographs he made, and should not be confused with his own auction record.

Testino is a living, actively exhibiting artist with no confirmed catalogue raisonne, so verification of prints, edition sizes, and provenance should run through his current representation, Patricia Low Contemporary in Gstaad and Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach, or the artist's studio directly. His auction market is comparatively young and thin next to blue-chip painters, with only a small number of documented results and incomplete public data on auction houses and dates for some of them. Individual prices appear to track the fame of the sitter, such as Diana or Kate Moss, as much as the image itself. Collectors should treat any single auction result as a data point tied to a specific print and edition rather than as a smooth market trend line.