chanel | le19m touches down in tokyo

Creating his own world one romantic and quirky photograph at a time, fashion photographer and documentarian Gorka Postigo has built a visual universe that feels both intimate and expansive. Born and raised in Spain and now based in Paris, he has spent his career filling his passport with stamps from some of the world’s most exciting cities. Yet he shares that his favourite place, without question, is behind the camera. 

Over his career, he has photographed campaigns for Miu Miu, Jean Paul Gautier, and Paco Rabanne, and his work has appeared in Vogue Italia, Vogue Spain, and more. But it was in 2018 that his more personal work came into focus with the debut of ‘Presente Futuro.’ The project spotlighted transgender youth in Spain, opening at La Fresh Gallery in Madrid, and – due to its success – was published as a monograph just a year later. 

His latest project, ‘You’ll Never See My New Friends,’ is yet another deeply personal endeavour. Debuting at LSD Paris during Paris Photo 2025, the 100-page book is a journey through 64 photographs chronicling loss, grief, queer resistance, and chosen family. Within its pages, Postigo explores photography as a means of healing, transformation, and connection. Taken over the past five years in Paris, London, Spain, Brazil, the Ivory Coast, Japan, and Shanghai, the photographs have not only filled Postigo’s passport but also left a lasting impression on his life and on the LGBTQIA+ community. 

For Schön!’s latest instalment of our ‘passport’ series – where we discover the cities, restaurants, museums, and travel anecdotes that have left a mark (or stamp) – we chat to Postigo about the places that inspire him, both behind the lens and beyond, and the stamps he hopes to collect next. 

Where are you right now, and what does a typical day look like for you?

I’m in my studio in Paris, where I spend about 80% of my time. Most of my days are filled with paperwork, pre-production, and post-production. It’s not as glamorous as many people imagine the life of a photographer to be.

If your passport had a stamp for every place that shaped you and your photography, which stamps would we see first?

If we speak about a physical place, it’s definitely Madrid, where I grew up. If we speak about an imaginary one, then MTV – I spent hours watching music videos, and that shaped so much of my cultural references and the visual language of ‘90s pop culture.

When you’re not behind the camera, how do you like to spend your time?

Behind the camera! [laughs] Honestly, I’d love to shoot much more than I actually do. Most of my anxiety comes from not shooting.

Which city, studio, or shoot gave you your first glimpse into the world of fashion photography?

I’d say a trip I did to New York City with a friend in the late ‘90s. Bumping into celebrities in SoHo in a pre-social media world was the closest I could ever get to this dreamy world I wanted to be a part of… Also, I remember, I came out as gay for the first time. I told my friend I was gay, and it felt so liberating!

Throughout your career, you’ve done both fashion and documentary photography. Out of all your work, which project feels like a passport back to your childhood?

Commercially, shooting a Calvin Klein campaign with Arca and seeing it on a Houston Street billboard in New York. That was a full-circle moment with my inner child who dreamed of that world.

In personal work, definitely the launch of ‘You’ll Never Meet My New Friends’ – a project that confronts my own spiritual journey, connecting people I’ve lost with new people I’ve met along the way.

Your photography style is characterised as an adventure in romanticism and quirkiness. If it had its own passport stamp, what would it look like?

Somewhere between a club stamp and a passport stamp – something you get at 4 a.m. on the way to somewhere unexpected.

Where do you still dream of getting a new stamp – a city you’d love to do a shoot in or document?

Honestly, my dream stamp is the paid stamp – both for the invoices I owe and those clients still owe me. In other words, to keep working so I can fund my personal projects.

What’s the most memorable stamp in your passport – a place that changed the way you see the world through your camera lens?

I’ve lost my passport so many times I barely remember the stamps… And now they barely stamp anything anymore. But recently, I’d say Brazil. It always gives me incredible people and memories that deeply enrich my experience.

Your Spanish heritage made an appearance within your ‘Presente Futuro’ project and subsequent monograph on the documentation of LGBTQIA+ youth in your home country. How does your work continue to present your culture as well as the queer community?

As queer people, we need to connect on a deeper level as a community. There are so many issues we don’t address, and we need to open those conversations. We live under the illusion of connection through technology, but in reality, there’s a deep disconnect.

With this book, I used social media to reach out to strangers and bring different experiences together – and I discovered that in the end, we all look for the same thing: Love and understanding.

Where did your new personal project, ‘You’ll Never Meet My New Friends,’ first come about?

It began with the need to navigate a personal process of grief.

The book explores loss, grief, queer resistance, and chosen family – with photographs taken in Paris, London, Spain, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Japan, and Shanghai. What is a moment during shooting that has stayed with you the most?

Photographing a trans father with his baby. At one point, he asked if I would mind if he breastfed, and invited me to document it. It was an incredibly generous moment – full of pride, beauty, and vulnerability. For me, it’s one of the most touching memories of the project, and also one of the most beautiful images in the book.

Why was this project so important for you, not only to photograph but to share with the world?

This project was important because it allowed me to make sense of a period of my life marked by loss, transformation, and rediscovery. Sharing it felt necessary. I didn’t want the work to stay only with me – I wanted these stories, these encounters, and these intimate moments to resonate with others who might be going through their own journey of grief or reinvention. It’s a way of saying: You’re not alone, and there is beauty and connection even in the most difficult transitions.

‘You’ll Never Meet My New Friends’ is unveiled on November 16 at Paris Photo 2025. 

photography. Gorka Postigo from ‘You’ll Never Meet My New Friends’
words. Amber Louise

The much-anticipated exhibition by photography titan Wolfgang Tillmans, ‘Passages Silencieux’ (Silent Passages), is now open at the Espace Louis Vuitton München. This show is a profound journey through nearly three and a half decades of the Remscheid-born artist’s genre-defying work, pulled exclusively from the renowned Fondation Louis Vuitton Collection. 

This presentation reaffirms the Fondation’s long-standing commitment to Tillmans, whose groundbreaking photographic constellations were a central feature of its inaugural display back in 2014. The show follows hard on the heels of the artist’s major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which concluded just last month before the museum’s closure for renovation.

Tillmans, splitting his time between London and Berlin, has personally curated the pieces on show, which span his practice from the late 1980s to the present. Rejecting a staid timeline, the display – which the artist has meticulously arranged across both storeys of the Espace – employs his signature method of ‘constellation,’ weaving connections between various temporal and geographical moments. 

Here, intimate portraiture and striking club scenes from his early 1990s period sit in dynamic conversation with photographs of plants, serene still life studies, and his audacious abstract works. There is no hierarchy of scale or genre; framed pieces hang alongside unframed prints, creating silent, yet powerful, links between pictures that are as deeply private as they are universally collective, attesting to a world made up of interconnected elements. As Tillmans suggests, the image is “a good starting point for thinking about the world.”

The artist’s lifelong fascination with the medium’s material reality is front and centre. Having famously started with a black-and-white laser photocopier in his very first exhibition in a Hamburg café, ‘Passages Silencieux’ highlights his subsequent experimentation. In certain works, like ‘Berlin’ (2006), Tillmans re-photographs and re-photocopies existing prints, deliberately enlarging them to highlight the paper’s texture and the idiosyncrasies of its inking. 

Meanwhile, his famous camera-less abstractions – such as the ‘Einzelgänger’ series – encapsulate the very essence of photography: creations that exist solely through the interplay of photosensitive paper, light, and dry chemistry. These abstract pieces, which he sees as a “pause rather than a rupture” from his figurative work, have been exhibited alongside his more traditional pictures since 1998, underscoring his expansive view of the medium’s technical, artistic, and thematic possibilities. 

This new chapter, part of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s ambitious ‘Hors-les-murs’ international programme, is a vital stop for anyone eager to see how Tillmans continues to renew the very relevance of the photographic image for the contemporary viewer. 

The exhibition runs in Munich until 14 March 2026. Find out more here.

photography. courtesy of Wolfgang Tillmans, Florian Ebner (portrait)
words. Gennaro Costanzo

The magnificent Prada Rong Zhai, the historic, restored residence in the heart of Shanghai, has opened its stunning doors for the first time to SEA BEYOND, the ocean preservation initiative run by the Prada Group in partnership with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO. Launched on 11 October, this ten-day, multi-faceted educational programme engages the local community in the vital, yet often overlooked, relationship between humanity and the ocean.

The focus of the initiative is the Ocean&Climate Village, a travelling, immersive science exhibition from the IOC of UNESCO, making its second ever stop in China. This experience has transformed the historic Ballroom of Prada Rong Zhai, a room famed for its massive, sixty-nine-panel stained-glass skylight, into a vital learning hub. The SEA BEYOND partnership between the Prada Group and the IOC began back in $2019$ to raise awareness of ocean sustainability globally, and has since shared its educational principles with over $35,000$ students worldwide. 

Visitors are guided through interactive displays by student volunteers from local universities, exploring crucial issues like marine biodiversity and ocean acidification. Guests can also witness the impact of global warming via the UpSeaDown installation, which projects rising sea levels right up to 2100, or literally Feel the Change by touching models of marine ecosystems in both their natural and acidified states. Experts from the First Institute of Oceanography (FIO) and the UN Decade Collaborative Centre (DCC-OCC) supported the adaptation of the science to the local context.

Beyond the formal exhibition, the programme weaves art and personal stories to encourage action. On the fourth floor, Emmy-nominated environmental photographer Enzo Barracco presents a striking selection of images captured during his expeditions to threatened marine environments across Antarctica, the Galapagos, Hawaii and, for the first time, Alaska. 

Barracco shared that he focuses on the beauty of the ocean as he genuinely believes “a positive story can inspire and drive a change,” demonstrating how art can bridge science and society. Down in the garden, open-air screenings highlight impactful work supported by SEA BEYOND, including the project focused on the discovery of black coral in Sicily.

The launch was marked by a series of insightful thematic talks live-streamed on Tencent Channels, which brought together high-level figures from science, the arts and the private sector. 

Japanese Ichthyologist and Artist SAKANA-KUN and Coral Gardeners Founder Titouan Bernicot shared how their childhood passions blossomed into lifelong commitments to marine protection. “Sharing knowledge empowers children, who will lead the next generation, to learn. Projects like SEA BEYOND are not just about today; they connect to the future through ocean education,” said SAKANA-KUN.

The most heart-warming element saw a group of elementary school students from Guizhou, an inland province of China, travelling to Shanghai to experience the seaside for the very first time thanks to the SEA BEYOND project, combining personal adventure with hands-on educational workshops blending art and science. The entire cultural and educational content was thoughtfully developed with the UCCA Foundation, reinforcing the mission to build a more informed, engaged and sustainable relationship with the ocean.

The SEA BEYOND programme is free to the public and will run until 19 October 2025. Learn more here.

photography. courtesy of Prada Group
words. Gennaro Costanzo