by In a world that is increasingly saturated with fast fashion and fleeting trends, a new exhibition asks: What if beauty could be both courageous and responsible?
From April 24th to 27th, 2025, the Leica Store & Gallery will host meat packing in New York Re: frameA living photography exhibition in cooperation with the legendary fashion photographer Enrique Badulescu and Marina Testino, a sustainability lawyer whose art campaigns have long challenged the fashion world to look at their values deeper. In terms of time with the earth month, Re: frame is more than a gallery show – it is a call to act.
Inspired by the crisis of the textile waste in the Chile Atacama desert, in which over 39,000 tons thrown away clothing – many of the clothing is brand new and never worn – the exhibition asks the visitors to rethink their relationship with fashion. “This exhibition began with a single, striking picture: a mountain with clothing waste in the Chile Atacama desert – it is so big to look out of space,” explains Testino. “It is an urgent symbol for the separation of fashion: beauty without responsibility, fullness without intentions.”
But instead of presenting the crisis as a lawsuit, Re: frame Transforms it into a creative catalyst and shows a number of highly effective photographs that use the visual language of fashion to criticize their consequences. The pictures of Creative Director Romina Herrera Malatesta contains models that carry sculptural pieces from textile waste-tortured shirts, crumpled packaging, even plastic bottle-sowing pieces of sustainable designers such as Gabriela Hearst, Stella McCartney and Tara Babylon. “It is an invitation that is how we produce, consume and evaluate, pause and reflect on clothing”, shares of testino of the show. “Because if fashion can shape culture, identity and dreams, it is also the strength to form solutions.”
When it came to selecting a photographer for the project, Badulescu felt like a natural fit. As a long -time Leica user, he shot the entire series with the cameras of the German brand. Re: frame marks his return not only to fashion photography – he all caught from Kate Moss to David Bowie – but with a purpose. After taking the industry to raise his daughter, his creative re -entry feels personally.
“He always had a deep sensitivity to his surroundings,” says Testino about her employees. “He built one of the first houses in Tulum long before it is today, and he did it in a way that respected the country, the community and the wilderness. The same sensitivity leads to his creative work.” His characteristic boldness – licks, the light, light that plays like music – brings a feeling of movement and emotions for every frame. “He understood that this was not just a moding – it was a start -up starter.”
This conversation is just about changing perceptions as to change the practices. Too often a sustainable fashion is represented as boring, happy or minimalistic – an aesthetics based on the imagination and freedom that feel personally and funny. But Re: frame insists that sustainability can actually be alive. “We have to rename it,” says Testino. “Sustainability does not mean giving up color, luxury or style. It means to redefine it. And if we do it well, we change perception – and from there we change the behavior.”
Testino has been working on this redefinition through campaigns such as #ONEDResstoImpress and #yellowlikealemon for years that use social media, public installations and videos to challenge the FASTHION Culture. Her framework, which she describes as “4 s of sustainable fashion” – Simten, share, sustainably related and second -hand – forward an accessible and pragmatic path.
The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions, and a large part of this effects is hidden – in supply chains that are buried on landfill and are buried in deserts such as Atacama. “If a T-shirt costs $ 10 and the industry market is about 4x,” explains Testino, “that means that it costs about $ 2.50. So how much do you think the person who sews was actually paid for?”
With Re: frameThese questions are not asked didactically – they are embedded in the pictures. The exhibition is not about shame or guilt. “It’s about awareness, expression and action,” says Testino. “We show that fashion can still be beautiful but also aware. It can inspire without costs.”
Since the world is fighting with a political standstill and looking back on climate obligations, Testino believes that power to change is not only in politics – it is in culture. “Change does not only come from governments,” she says. “It starts with people, with the community, with what we wear, what we support, how we appear in our daily life.” She refers to photography as a particularly strong medium for this type of change: “It stops time. You feel before you even think. And when you see textile waste styled, transformed and reinterpreted, it is different.”
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