LONDON.- This September, Shake It Up at Sotheby’s in London will cast a first, fully-embracing light on Mario Testino’s artistic journey with an exhibition, and ultimate sale, of over 300 works which form part of his personal collection. An imaginatively installed exhibition – directed and designed by Testino himself - will reveal the constant and lively dialogue the legendary Peruvian photographer enjoys with some of the greatest artists of our time. Over a series of live and online auctions, a curated group of paintings, photographs, works on paper and sculpture, will be offered to benefit the Museo MATE, Peru.

Alongside two auctions of international contemporary art on the 13 and 14 September Sotheby’s will stage an online sale of 88 photographs that have inspired and influenced Testino’s own work in the medium. “I always wanted to collect things that weren’t like me. I’ve always been excited by everything that makes me look at something differently”, Testino says.

Testino started collecting photography in the 1980s - specifically a portrait of Vivien Leigh by the surrealist photographer Angus McBean. His initial focus was on early and mid-20th century photography before moving on to contemporary practitioners which are the focus of the online auction. The collection is a unique and important archive of the work of pioneering contemporary fine-art and documentary photographers. Many of the artists are multidisciplinary and use photography alongside their performance, installation, film, drawing, painting and sculptural practice. Highlights include works by Vanessa Beecroft, Olafur Eliasson, Nan Goldin, Florian Maier-Aichen, Andres Serrano, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gregory Crewdson, Martin Parr and Richard Mosse, among many others.

“This carefully curated group of photographs from the Mario Testino Collection is an education in the importance and value of photography in contemporary art. The best art affords us a journey and exploration into new ways of thinking and understanding the world around us; this group of contemporary photography achieves precisely that.” - Brandei Estes, Sotheby’s Head of Photographs, London

Bidding for the online auction of Photographs from the Mario Testino Collection will open at 3pm on September 1 close at 3pm on September 15. In 2012 Mario Testino established the not-for-profit Museo MATE in Lima to promote and support local and global culture in Peru. Proceeds from the auction will go toward the expansion of the centre’s programme of exhibitions, residencies and education initiatives.

Selected Highlights
Gregory Crewdson Untitled (Bear with Pool of Milk), 1998 Chromogenic print Estimate £15,000-20,000
Gregory Crewdson’s Untitled (Bear with Pool of Milk) 1998, is a haunting and cinematic constructed reality that exemplifies the artists’ interest in artifice. His work combines the documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with a dreamlike quality reminiscent of such filmmakers as Steven Spielberg and David Lynch.

Richard Mosse, Lac Vert, 2012 Chromogenic print Estimate £10,000–15,000
This series of Richard Mosse’s oeuvre highlights the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He uses a special type of camera that imbues the greens from vegetation with a pink hue, thus suggesting Congo as a fantastical place with the surreal and dream-like quality he adds to his work. The series acts as a reflection of the lack of attention Congo receives in Western press, despite the millions of people who have died in the war.

Inez van Lamsweerde The Widow (White), 1997 Chromogenic print Estimate £10,000–15,000
Inez van Lamsweerde uses a surrealist language and displays a fascination with technological developments in her work. In The Widow, at first it seems van Lamsweerde has entered us into a narrative world with a young girl posing in the foreground, yet because of the strong colour scheme and formality of the composition, van Lamsweerde feels that the work no longer refers to a visible reality and the narrative is pushed away.

Florian Maier-Aichen Untitled, 2004 Chromogenic print, flush-mounted to aluminium Estimate £10,000-15,000
Florian Maier-Aichen’s works reinterpret landscape photography with obscure or aerial vantage points, seeming at the same time alien and familiar to us. His photographs address the issues of globalisation and visual perception, and he slightly alters each image to heighten the tension within the vast contemplative space, as in Untitled, 2004.

Vanessa Beecroft, VB43.035.Ali, 2000 Chromogenic print Estimate £6,000-8,000
Vanessa Beecroft’s series VB43 was her first solo project in the UK, consisting of a performance event staged at Gagosian Gallery, London in 2000. This work,
VB43.035.ali, is one of the photographs taken during the performance where twenty-three pale, red-haired girls occupied the gallery space for hours. The Botticelli-like mass of girls illustrate Beecroft’s constant theme of groupidentity in a new form.

Rineke Dijkstra Hilton Head Island, SC, USA, 1992 Chromogenic print Estimate £6,000-8,000
Rineke Dijkstra’s Hilton Head Island, SC, USA, 1992 is a striking example of the artist’s interest in the transitional phases of people and how their psychological states are expressed through their physical being.

Anne Collier Spiritual Warfare, 2006 Chromogenic print, dry-mounted to board Estimate £6,000-8,000
In Anne Collier’s series Spiritual Warfare, she centrally composed images of found self-help artefacts. Here she has documented spirals of audio tapes, and although the work was designed to address messy emotional states, the photograph is undemonstrative. Unlike with other photographers, Collier’s photographic aptitude comes from the fact that she never holds a camera up to her eye.

Nan Goldin, French Chris at the Drive-in, NJ, 1979 Cibachrome print Estimate £4,000-6,000
Nancy “Nan” Goldin is renowned for her snapshots of American life, charting the lives of her friends and acquaintances in the sub-cultures of New York City. “My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back”, Goldin says.

Roni Horn, Untitled #5, 1998 Two pigment prints Estimate £15,000-20,000
Roni Horn’s Untitled #5, 1998 exemplifies her long standing conceptual and aesthetic interest in doubling through her photographic practice. Her work has an emotional and psychological dimension, and can be seen to engage with post-Minimalist forms as vessels for affective insight, with nature and humankind central to her.