CentroCentro and PHotoEspaña present the Carla Sozzani Collection in Spain for the first time

Between Art and Fashion shows a selection of 166 works by 90 international photographers from the personal collection of the Italian editor Carla Sozzani, a renowned international figure in fashion, art and design

The exhibition brings together works by photographers like Richard Avedon, David La Chapelle, Daido Moriyama, Moholy-Nagy, Helmut Newton, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz and Francesca Woodman, among others

According to Sozzani, the exhibition is an invitation to stroll through her life experience, her relationships with great photographers from all over the world, her career in the fashion world and her personal vision of the world, femininity and beauty

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Carla Sozzani talks about her collection

On 23 September, the exhibition Between Art and Fashion. Photographs from the Carla Sozzani Collection will open to the public at CentroCentro, a venue managed by the Culture, Tourism and Sports Area of the Madrid Town Hall via Madrid Destino. The show is part of the Official Section of the 23rd edition of PHotoESPAÑA, the international photography festival which CentroCentro has been partnering with every year since 2015.

Between Art and Fashion shows a selection of 166 works by a total of 90 international photographers from the personal collection of Carla Sozzani, a key figure in fashion, art and design in Italy and an international icon. Her extensive collection brings together works from the 19th century until today and includes pieces by artists like Berenice Abbott, Richard Avedon, Masahisa Fukase, David La Chapelle, László Moholy-Nagy, Daido Moriyama, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Leni Riefenstahl, Paolo Roversi, Vivian Sassen, Alfred Stieglitz and Francesca Woodman, among others.

This collection, curated by the Fundación Sozzani, is the outcome of 40 years of encounters and discoveries; it is an impeccable selection of pictures which reveal the collector’s personal vision of the world, femininity and beauty. The exhibition is not closed in concept since the collector herself wanted to invite the public to stroll through her life experience, along with her relationship with great photographers from all over the world and her professional career in the fashion world. The images reflect how she interacts with this universe and how she sees art.

With extensive knowledge of art history and an innate instinct to sniff out trends, Carla Sozzani became famous in the early 1970s for her bold eye for not only fashion but also photography. Between 1979 and 1986, she was the director of specials for Vogue Italia, a revolutionary magazine whose editor-in-chief, starting 1988, was her sister, Franca. In 1987, Carla Sozzani was appointed director of the Italian edition of Elle, and after that she opened a gallery, created a publishing house and invented a new concept with the opening of 10 Corso Como in Milan in 1991, which she envisions as a “living magazine”. Her name always appears among the 500 most influential people in the fashion industry. The Fondazione Sozzani was founded in 2016 and is dedicated to cultural promotion through photography, fashion and the fine arts.

“My life has always spanned art and fashion. I have never been able to take either direction entirely; I’ve navigated between both disciplines my entire life because I really find no difference between them. To me, everything has to do with beauty.”