THE CLASSIC #15

I’m not sure when I first heard of Willy Fleckhaus but it must have been an art director or graphic designer of the old guard in London who told me about him. Over the years I have heard numerous anecdotes about Fleckhaus and the extremes he went to in order to fulfil his vision for whatever project he was working on but those anecdotes were also told with a great deal of admiration: “Fleckhaus was a genius.”

I have wanted to feature Fleckhaus in these pages for a long time and I’m glad it finally came to fruition, thanks to the Munich-based photo historian and freelance exhibition curator Hans-Michael Koetzle.

Another name I have long had on my list is Fan Ho. “Jumping up and down with excitement” are not words most would associate with visitors to a photography fair but that was exactly what I witnessed when Blue Lotus Gallery exhibited Fan Ho’s work at Photo London in 2023.

In the last issue, we featured one of the most controversial cultural figures in Italy in the 20th century, Curzio Malaparte.
This time, Laura Leonelli turns her attention to another Italian figure, Carlo Mollino; designer, architect, photographer, author, racing driver and more. Unlike Malaparte, Mollino wasn’t a scoundrel but he certainly wasn’t politically correct.

I enjoyed compiling the final article in this issue, about collecting beyond the final print and I’m grateful to all the interviewees who contributed to it.