by ‘It ended the way I wanted it to end,’ says Edward Enninful firmly, speaking just days after his final issue as editor-in-chief of British Vogue hit the shelves. The parting cover is a paean to Enninful’s history, and his achievements at the magazine, featuring 40 iconic women he has worked with over the years, from Victoria Beckham to Oprah Winfrey, Dua Lipa and Anok Yai. But now his eyes are set on the future. His next venture is an unexpected move away from fashion and London – his take on Robert Mapplethorpe, in a show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris.
Enninful refuses to discuss a rumored split with Vogue supremo Anna Wintour – “I don’t comment on gossip, I never have” – but in his six-and-a-half years at the magazine, he has set a series of precedents, including the first diagonal of British Vogue. cover star, Paris Lees, and her eldest, Judi Dench aged 85 in June 2020. He was also behind the first braille and audio editions of the magazine.
Mapplethorpe questioned portraiture. What is beautiful? Who is allowed in?
“Inclusivity and diversity weren’t just words when I started,” he says. “I believe in actions. I’m very happy with what we’ve done and I’m very happy to be leaving on a high. I think the industry is changing and I hope it continues to change. I am proud to be able to help this new way of seeing people.”
Enninful, speaking via Zoom from his London home, seems to be the perfect match for Mapplethorpe, the inspired photographer-turned-agent with a scrupulous eye, who challenged traditional ideas of beauty. “He questioned what portraiture is,” says Enninful. “What is beautiful? Who is allowed in? I believe I have done the same – we both questioned the status quo in our industries.”
Enninful’s career in fashion began soon after his family came to the UK from Ghana. At the age of 16, he became a model after being scouted by the legendary British stylist Simon Foxton on the London tube. At the age of 18, Enninful became the youngest ever fashion director at an international publication when he was appointed to the role at iD. After two decades there, he worked at Italian and American Vogue, as well as W. In 2016, he was awarded an OBE for services to diversity in the fashion industry.
It was Foxton who introduced Enninful as a teenager to The Black Book, Mapplethorpe’s explosive collection of 96 erotic photographs of black men. “I was a dark-skinned model with a bald head back then,” he says. “I could see myself in Ken Moody.” Moody is a fitness instructor and is often seen as Mapplethorpe’s muse. “I loved the way Mapplethorpe used light. It was so powerful that you wanted to touch the picture. There was a feeling that something new and incredible was happening in his work.”
Mapplethorpe’s treatment of the black male body has come under fire for its exploitative and fetishistic look. Moody later wrote of a strained relationship with the photographer, who he claimed once called “Oreo”, because his manners were not “ghetto”. Enninful says: “Throughout history, black men have been portrayed in many ways. It was used to create some of the most iconic images. We need to keep the conversation about objectivity going. But we have to deal with images that define men and women – it can’t be isolated to just black men.”
Enninful’s own approach to the medium is more collaborative. “I was a model,” he says, “so I understand being on the set and not having a say, when you’re serving the image and the football. I was very lucky to have people like Simon Foxton and [photographer] Nick Knight, who encouraged me to speak up. Modeling is not easy – you are always told to stop it, your opinion matters less. So when I’m working with Kate or Naomi, we work together on stories, we develop characters – that’s something I really learned from those early days.”
Mapplethorpe became Enninful’s talisman when he hit full throttle in London’s fashion scene in the 1980s, a pace he kept up for the next decade, long after Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS-related complications in 1989 at the age of 42.” Kids who came together in the 1990s – some of whom are now the world’s leading fashion photographers – Mapplethorpe had such an impact on us all. We were so inspired by the honesty in his some pictures.”
Enninful’s take on Mapplethorpe is elegant, emotional and quietly disturbing, reflecting their shared sensibility and deep anxiety to be seen. Combing through more than 2,000 images in the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation archive, Enninful selected just 46. “It was very instinctive.” After four decades working on printed material, Enninful approached the exhibition as an editor, pairing the images up as a procession of double-page spreads.
As you might expect, Enninful seems to evoke the most iconic images: old-school glamor and high society infused with a bit of brains thrown in. of Susan Sarandon and her daughter, Eva Amurri recalls the cover of Vogue March 2022 Enninful of Naomi Campbell and her daughter in arms. A full-body shot of a half-naked young Arnold Schwarzenegger, flexing his famous muscles, is seen alongside female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, taken from behind, wearing a stunning dress, her body looking as striking and sculpted as Schwarzenegger’s body. A famous portrait, shot in profile, of Ken Moody and another subject often referred to as Robert Sherman reminded Enninful of herself and her husband Alex Maxwell, a fashion video director.
The pairings reflect Mapplethorpe’s fascination with binaries and blurring binaries – gender expectations in flux, high and lowbrow, beautiful and ugly, classical and subcultural. Where Mapplethorpe’s pedantic perfection slips towards coldness and severity, Enninful’s juxtapositions draw out the humor and poignancy present in his work as well. One pairing with Embrace, an elegant 1982 portrait of two men, one black, one white, holding each other, with Charles Bowman, brings a sublime and sultry close-up from 1980 that shows off Bowman’s polished herculean torso. Both have something to say about power and masculinity, but the contrast could not be clearer: softness and vulnerability versus muscular impatience. It’s a reminder of how many sides Mapplethorpe had. “He was a master,” Enninful said. “But I think he was punched. I wanted to show the breadth of his work.”
The show also hints at stories yet to be told in Mapplethorpe’s work. Next to the stark, minimalist purity of Moody and Sherman’s portrait is one of a mysterious figure named Aira who is dressed in feathers, fur, a veil and false nails. “She’s an old man!” Exclaims Enninful with joy. But little is known about Aira beyond her name. “I’m obsessed with her! I didn’t stop searching – I asked friends who were in New York at the time. I am very interested to know who she was.”
At the end of the exhibition there are two independent portraits taken in 1976: Princess Margaret smiling in a bathing suit on the beach and a helpless David Hockney, retreating and trapped in the middle of the mountain. The improvisational looseness, the mattress and the apparent lack of choreography reveal another side to Mapplethorpe. “It’s almost like he just stood there and said, ‘Let me grab my camera!'” These shots are a way for Enninful to put a British stamp on the show. “They are so iconic and so British – and, as an editor and a British person, it was important for me to show that it shone a light on our nobility!”
No less striking is Enninful’s decision to avoid Mapplethorpe’s more sexually explicit images, such as the pictures he took at the BDSM club Mineshaft in the 1970s, and those published in his controversial X Portfolio. “It was impossible to take everything into account,” he says. “I just had to go with my instinct.” Does that mean he doesn’t like the hardcore images anymore? Enninful becomes tactful again. “I appreciate his work. He is a great artist. But for this exhibition, my first curatorial effort, these are the images that jumped out at me.”
Mapplethorpe was relentless in his pursuit of “the perfect moment”. Is that another trait that Enninful identifies with? “Everyone would tell you, I would literally change images until the magazine had to be printed. It was never done. It’s never good enough. It always has to be the best it can be in my opinion. It’s scary sometimes.”
Enninful doesn’t seem too happy with this venture into the art world – perhaps because his mission to change the way we see each other is far from over. “You can only do something once and say we’re done and move on,” he says. “You have to stick with an attitude. You have to keep at it.” He clearly admires this quality in Mapplethorpe, a kindred spirit in the battle to redefine beauty.
“Everybody should be seen,” he says. “I’ve always felt that. Everyone should be represented, regardless of race, religion, sexuality or socio-economic background. If you can see it, you can be there.”
• Robert Mapplethorpe is at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, 2 March to 6 April.
