Ezra Petronio: Bold & Beautiful

There are certain times in certain places when particular places come to the fore. Those times and those faces demand to be documented. Bold & Beautiful is the result of this impulse for social documentation that has led Ezra Petronio, Editor-in-Chief of Paris based fashion and arts magazine, Self Service, across borders, organically following the intricate web of the magazine’s ‘extended family tree’, attempting through his photographs to reveal the creative forces who share and shape Self Service magazine’s cultural landscape.
Over a few years, hundreds of people slipped through our doors to pose in front of the flash of his original 1970s Polaroid camera — intimate moments, one-on-one conversations, resulting in the revelation of each subject’s inner beauty and stature, a subtle combination of genuine sincerity, truth, and an inevitable touch of glamour. Not a pre-meditated grouping, but rather an organically unraveled network of people: designers, musicians, artists, photographers, writers, thinkers, people who make up our cultural world — establishment and avant-garde, artistic community and fashionable society, old friends, new friends and friends of friends. Unsuspecting members of the cultural community to which they all belong, they reflect individually and collectively the very essence of today’s creative soul.

270 portraits including the likes of Azzedine Alaia, Heidi Slimane, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean-Paul Goude, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, David Sims, Jürgen Teller, Hussein Chalayan, Nick Knight, Alexander McQueen, Grace Coddington, Donna Karen, Miuccia Prada, Jil Sander, Ann Demulmeester, Yohji Yamamoto, Carine Roitfeld, Marianne Faithfull, Jarvis Cocker, Yvon Lambert, Sam Taylor Wood, Michael Clark, Tracey Emin, Jeffrey Deitch, Vanessa Beecroft, Ugo Rondinone, Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Terry Richardson, Jessica Craig Martin, Philip Lorca di Corcia, David Armstrong, Matthew Marks, Sarah Morris, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Isabelle Adjani, Chloe Sevigny, Johnathan Newhouse, Ingrid Sischy, Graydon Carter.