His supermodel shots are synonymous with an era and his commercial campaigns art. Ramona Depares reviews Arthur Elgort’s The Bigger Picture, showing in Milan.

There are fashion photographers – and then there’s Arthur Elgort, the man who is known not just for getting the commercial shot but for creating art out of it.

Elgort is a man whose passions – most notably music and dance – he allowed to spill into his professional life to spectacular effect, transforming photos that would otherwise have been just another commercial campaign into iconic images.

Elgort is also the man credited with removing the ‘super’ out of the supermodel and, with a seemingly-casual snapshot, trans-forming them into living, breathing human beings using a combination of movement and effective lighting.

Rendering perfection on paper is hardly such a big deal in this age of technological aides, many will claim. Turning that perfection into exquisitely imperfect humanity that is just as alluring, on the other hand... now that is no mean feat and Elgort was master of the technique.

Which is why when I learnt that he was exhibiting some of the works reproduced in The Bigger Picture, his recently-launched book that illustrates over 50 years of fashion photography, in near-by Milan, I jumped at the chance to visit.

At the beginning of his career, Elgort started out as a painter, a fact that maybe is evidenced even in the way he approaches commercial shoots, somehow always managing to pinpoint the artistic angle.

Mick and Keith

He truly came into his own towards the mid-1970s, soon after his first shoot for the British Vogue magazine, a working relationship that was to subsit for decades.

Some might say that he was lucky enough to get to work with models in the real age of the supermodel, the days when names like Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss actually meant something.

Elgort’s exhibition is currently showing at Galleria Carla Sozzani within 10, Corso Como, a landmark building itself.

The gallery is found within a traditional Milanese palazzo best described as a sprawling network of spaces, each housing one artistic curiosity after the other.

There is the cafe-cum-restaurant on the ground-floor, reaching out into the courtyard with its perfected interior decor and the Milanesi hipsters who have claimed it as their own.

A fresh orange juice will set you back €15, but it’s all worth it because you sip it out of exquisite designer glasses.

Then, there’s the interiors store and the bookstore, the latter especially a dream come true for anyone into art and design, a treasure trove of publications covering visual arts in the widest possible sense.

You don’t really care who is in the picture. You just care about the picture

The roof terrace, with its view that includes the infamous Unicredit skyscraper, is also worth a visit. But the heart of the building is, of course, the Galleria Carla Sozzani – a wide, airy space boasting very minimalist decor that offered just the right backdrop to host Elgort’s works.

The exhibition includes his most famous pieces. Kate Moss and an elephant trunk greet you as soon as you enter.

While impressive enough in its own way, the shot is actually one of the least beguiling, perhaps because its subject fails to interact directly with the viewer.

For that matter, neither does Christy Turlington, shown with her head partially emerging out of a car’s sunroof in a different shot, engage directly with the camera. But, somehow, this shot captures that which the other doesn’t, maybe because in some ways it is too reminiscent of the National Geographic images we are so accustomed to seeing nowadays.

From there on, the exhibition doesn’t flag. Favourites on the list include Naomi Campbell caught fooling around with a blotting tissue around her lips, Elgort’s genius lying in the way the image flirts with us, hiding Campbell’s famously sensual lips, while at the same time drawing our eyes to them.

There’s a rather amazing shot of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards blowing smoke rings at each other, so candidly taken that you can almost imagine them stepping out of the canvas to blow some more smoke rings in your face.

Another one showing Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista smoking cigars, speaks of a long-gone-by era. Evangelista grins straight into the camera, while Turlington looks away, mouth wide open, her eyes in a seductive sideways glance. The total quotient of sex appeal in that one image is enough to blow a man’s mind.

The exhibition also features several ‘unknowns’, none the less attractive for not making it into the household names league. Flights of Fancy shot for Vogue, is one such beauty. The pint tutu’d ballerina, followed by a trail of schoolkids, is another.

At the end of the day, I guess this is the element that makes Elgort’s works the icons that they are. You don’t really care who is in the picture. You just care about the picture.

The Bigger Picture runs until April 6 at Galleria Carla Sozzani. This review was made possible thanks to Hotel Bernina, Via Torriani, Milano, www.hotelbernina.com.

www.galleriacarlasozzani.org