Marco Glaviano
2025 Honoree / Achievement in Fashion
Marco Glaviano was born in 1942 in Palermo, Sicily. He studied architecture at the University of Palermo where he developed his interest in photography.
He worked in theater as a set designer while simultaneously playing and recording with a jazz band that participated in several international jazz festivals in the sixties, where he first began to take photographs of fellow jazz musicians.
In 1967 he decided to pursue a career in photography and moved briefly to Rome, then to Milan, where he set up a studio and lived and worked for eight years.
His photographs began to appear in major European fashion magazines, notably Italian Vogue, which eventually led him to New York City where he settled in 1975 and soon signed an exclusive contract with American Vogue and, from 1982 to 1994, with Harper’s Bazaar.
Marco has continued to photograph fashion and beauty for the leading American and European magazines achieveing the status of one of the world’s best photographers, having photographed more than 500 covers and editorials for the most prestigious international publications.
In the eighties working with Elite founder John Casablancas and Elite president Monique Pillard he influenced the development of the supermodel phenomenon and was chosen by the Elite agency and supermodels Paulina Porizkova, Cindy Crawford and Eva Herzigova to photograph all of their famous swimsuit calendars.
In 1995 Marco designed and founded Pier59 Studios in New York, which is still recognized as the most important photo studio in the world.
His early interest in the evolution of digital photography led him to publish the first ever digital fashion image in American Vogue in 1982. Marco has been a consultant for Kodak, Fuji, Hasselblad, Phase One, Sinar and Scitex to advance the cause of digital photography. In 2001 togheter with his partner Tommy Wirz, he founded Milano Studio Digital in Milan, which is a showcase for the new frontier of digital photography.
Up until now, he has published fifteen books consisting of his personal photographs of the most famous models of the last decades, as well as photographs of his other passions: jazz, portraits and landscapes.
Among his more than twenty solo exhibitions, notable ones include those in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Moscow, Southampton, Milan, Palermo, and Capri. The first solo exhibition was in Palermo in 1948 when he was six (drawings). His work is part of many important private collections worldwide. Without confining himself to a single medium of communication, Marco has also photographed many major advertising campaigns for clients such as Loreal, Revlon, Calvin Klein, Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli and many others.
His interest in film and video has led him to direct a number of TV commercials and short films in music, fashion and beauty for both America and Europe.
Marco has three daughters, Barbara, Alessia and Adrianna, and the best cats ever, Silvestro and Lucifero. He currently lives and works between New York and Milan.
Website: www.marcoglaviano.com
Marco Glaviano portrait by Giovanni Gastel
